Azerbaijan, Baku,18 April / Trend corr S. Aliyev / "Construction of the second exploration well in the prospective field D-222 (Yalama) in Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea will be commenced in November with the rig named after Heydar Aliyev, which belongs to the Danish company Maersk," LUKoil-Volgograd-NIPImorneft OJSC reported on 18 April. The OJSC developed the project on estimation of the drilling impact on the environment.
Drilling will be carried out by the Overseas Operating Company Ltd. - operator of the project on exploration and development of the prospective bloc. The second exploration well is 2650 meters deep. It will be drilled at a distance of 22 km from the first exploration well at the depth of 690m.
LUKOIL drilled the first exploration well on Yalama field in 2005 in depth of 4,400 meters. During the drilling, small volume of hydrocarbon was discovered which was not commercially interesting for the Company.
The Heydar Aliyev rig is intended for drilling of wells with the depth up to 9,000m in the thickness of water up to 1,000m. Caspian Sea's maximum depth is 1,025m, which means that the rig may operate almost in any area of the water.
The contract on development of Yalama (block D-222) was signed on 3 July 1997. D-222 block is part of Yalama structure which is located in equal parts of the Azerbaijani and Russian sectors of the Caspian Sea, 30km offshore at a depth of from 80 to 700m.
In 2003, a set of agreements on development of D-222, envisaging an increase of LUKOIL's share in the project to 80% and expansion of the contracted area to 3,000sq km, was signed. In 2006, the contracted area was reduced to 1,300sq km and the exploration period was extended until 1 Nov 2009.
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