Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr S. Aliyev / The German company Wintershall, a subsidiary of BASF, intends to shelf its plans to develop Ashrafi, a large Azerbaijani off-shore field, due to the uneconomic state of oil production in the field, a representative of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), who is involved in negotiations on the project, said on 15 October.
Wintershall, will stop developing Ashrafi for the economics on the field do not suit the company, he said.
Wintershall is not satisfied with Ashrafi's economic attractiveness and the company wanted to join the area with another field, the SOCAR representative said, but did not release the name of the field.
"However, SOCAR did not allow the joining of the two fields. Therefore Wintershall will probably reject the development of the field," he said.
This year Wintershall signed a MOU with SOCAR regarding the development of Ashrafi. The company purchased geological data on the field from SOCAR to study the technical and commercial side of the project.
According to SOCAR's preliminary estimations, reserves in the field are assessed at 35-40mln tons of oil and 20-25bln cu m of gas.
Previously foreign companies were jointly operating the field with SOCAR. The contract on development of Ashrafi was signed on 14 December 1996 and the participants in the contract were BP-30%, Unocal - 25.5%, Itochu - 20%, Delta Hess - 4.5% and SOCAR - 20%. Later the contract was suspended for it was found that the hydrocarbon volume in the field was commercially non-attractive.