Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend S.Aliyev / The German RWE Company made a proposal to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), to study the opportunities on the off-shore fields of 'Babek' and 'Nakchivan' in Azerbaijani sector of Caspian, the SOCAR reported on 27 December. Possibly RWE will act together with the other German Company Wintershall in the projects for the development of the fields such as Ashrafi or Absheron, the same source stated.
Wintershall signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the SOCAR, regarding the development of Ashrafi field. However, the talks on this project have yet not yielded any results. RWE hopes to become the participant of the consortium on the Nabucco gas project, in order to export the Asian gas to Europe. RWE Group is one of the leading European energy companies.
Initial the reports suggested, the reserves of the field are estimated as 35-40mln tons of the oil and 20-25bln cu of the gas. A Production Sharing Agreement on Ashrafi -Dan Ulduzu prospective fields was signed on December 14th 1996. The participants in the project are BP - 30%, Unocal - 25.5%, Itochu - 20%, Delta Hess - 4.5% and SOCAR - 20%.
The Partner for the development project of Absheron off-shore field were ChevronTexaco (operator) - 30%, SOCAR - 50% and French Total - 20%. The contract was closed after the discovery of commercially unattractive volumes of hydrocarbons.
The contract for the development of the Nakchivan field was signed on 1 August 1997. The project participants were ExxonMobil - 50%, SOCAR - 50%. The contract was closed due to the discovery of commercially unattractive volumes of hydrocarbons.