Azerbaijan, Baku, 19 April / Trend / Dubai-based Dragon Oil is in talks with BP to export its oil produced in Turkmenistan via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
Dragon exports 80 percent of its oil via a swap agreement with Iran and the rest through Azerbaijan, with an option to Georgian Black Sea ports via railway. The Turkmen oil is delivered to Azerbaijan via Caspian to Baku.
The Company plans to increase oil output in Turkmenistan by 25 percent this year and another 25 percent in 2009, its President and Chief Executive Hussain Sultan told a conference in London on Friday, Reuters reports.
Currently the Company produces 32,000 barrels of oil per day. It plans to introduce western technologies to increase the daily oil production in offshore Cheleken block up to 2.2mln barrels per day. Dragon's main production is in the Cheleken oil block in the Caspian Sea, where it has nine production platforms in its main field. Dragon Oil plans to invest $400 million in capital expenditure, excluding drilling costs, up to 2009 and after that plans a major increase in investment, Sultan said.
The oil from Cheleken to BTC may also be supplied to Baku by tankers via Caspian. After transshipment in the terminal in Baku, the oil may be injected to the pipeline which currently transports averagely 750-800,000 barrels of oil irrespective of its nominal design capacity at 1mln barrels. BP is the operator of the project. Currently the pipeline transports the oil of BTC shareholder companies - participants of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli development project (excluding Exxon and Devon).
The specification of oil from Cheleken field seems to be as:
Density in API degree - 34;
Sulphur in % - 0,15;
Barrel in ton - 7,374.