Azerbaijan, Baku, 30 January / Trend corr S. Aliyev / ВР Azerbaijan, the technical operator of the Shah Deniz project, has suspended gas production at one of the wells in the field, the Government reported on 29 January. Now, the daily gas production debit in the field makes up some 16mln cu m, while before it had been 21mln cu m.
"Operation of the well was stopped to make some checks," a source at the Government said.
The production was stopped at the well which was the last one put into exploitation (end of December 2007) and will be resumed by the end of this week.
There are four wells, including the stopped one, operating in the field. Presently, the fifth well is being drilled to be put into operation in mid 2008.
The contract on development of off-shore Shah Deniz field was signed on 4 June 1996. The sides to the contract are ВР (operator - 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), LukAgip (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%), and TPAO (9%).
Gas production in the field was launched in December 2006. Presently, gas is transported to Georgia and Turkey via the South-Caucasus gas pipeline. Azerbaijan also purchases the gas.
Some 8.8bln cu m of gas is envisaged to be produced within Stage I per year. The gas will be supplied to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The production will be increased up to 20bln cu m within Stage II which will commence to be realized after 2012. At this Stage, the gas is implied to be exported to Europe.