Azerbaijan, Baku, March 1 / Trend E.Ismayilov /
Construction of the bottom base plate needed for advanced drilling wells within the Chirag oil project - - to increase oil production (on the block of offshore Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields -will be completed in May 2010, a source in the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) said.
"Construction work is underway. The complete ready base plate will be commissioned by May 2010," the source added.
The source said that Baku Deep Water Jacket Factory named after Heydar Aliyev together with BosShelf constructs the base plate, designed for drilling of 20 wells. Construction work is underway and partners are expected to complete the work Apr.20. Then BosShelf will hold the final works that will be finished in May
"A certain amount of work has already been completed, but in general it is expected to complete it by April 20," the source said.
Earlier BosShelf together with McDermott Caspian Contractors built six platforms under the development of these fields upon the order of BP, which is the operator of the ACG.
Estimated daily volume of oil production from the West Chirag platform will amount to 183,000 barrels, the Director of BP Company's offshore facilities project in Azerbaijan, Ilgar Mammadov said earlier.
The majority of construction within Chirag oil project will be implemented in Azerbaijan. In addition, the construction of the drilling platform module will be carried out in Azerbaijan, which for the previous projects was built abroad. For this reason, reconstruction work will be realized in Baku Deep Water Jacket Factory named after Heydar Aliyev, in particular, one production line will be upgraded and another new one will be created.
The expected daily volume of gas production from the new platform will be 229 million standard cubic feet (more than 6.5 million cubic meters). Estimated daily volume of gas injection into the layer on the platform will be 80 million standard cubic feet (about 2.3 million cubic meters). Chirag oil project envisages construction of a new platform "West Chirag", construction of necessary pipelines and work on the platform on deepwater Guneshli. The platform will be installed at a depth of 170 meters between the already-running production platforms Chirag and Guneshli.
Construction of a new platform within the Chirag oil project (COP), which envisages increasing oil production at the block of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) fields, is scheduled to begin in late 2010 - early 2011. Dede Gorgud rig will perform the drilling. The project is expected to get oil in 2013.
It is reckoned that the new Chirag Oil Project will add more than 300 million barrels of crude oil to the pipeline during the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) period.
The Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli PSA was signed in September 1994. The agreement provides for the development of the contract area within 30 years. The project requires $20 billion investment.
ACG participating interests are: BP (operator - 34.1 percent), Chevron (10.2 percent), SOCAR (10 percent), INPEX (10 percent), StatoilHydro (8.6 percent), ExxonMobil (8 percent), TPAO (6.8 percent), Devon (5.6 percent), ITOCHU (3.9 percent), and Delta Hess (2.7 percent).
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