Azerbaijan, Baku, April 18 / Trend E.Ismayilov /
Gas reserves in the lower layers of the Shah Deniz field may hit 200-300 billion cubic meters, Vice President of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) Khoshbakht Yusifzade said on Monday.
SOCAR put the question before BP, which is the technical operator of the development gas field Shah Deniz field, of the reasonability of developing the lower horizons of the field within Shah Debiz-2 project, Yusifzade said earlier.
He said this requires drilling of additional exploratory wells.
The Shah Deniz field's gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 billion cubic meters, while condensate - 240 million tons, Yusifzade said.
Yusifzade said the revision of the field's proven reserves is not excluded. However, this will be possible only after conduct of appropriate evaluation survey.
The contract to develop the offshore Shah Deniz field was signed June 4, 1996. Participants to the agreement are: BP (operator) - 25.5 percent, Statoil Hydro - 25.5 percent, NICO - 10 percent, Total - 10 percent, LukAgip - 10 percent, TPAO - 9 percent, SOCAR-10 percent.
At present, gas is transported to Georgia and Turkey via the South Caucasus gas pipeline.
Peak production is forecasted at over 8.6-9 billion cubic meters. It is planned that in the second stage of field development, gas production can be brought up to 25 billion cubic meters a year.