Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 3 /Trend E. Ismayilov/
The certification process of the Azerbaijani floating drilling vessel Istiglal will be completed in a short run, the source of oil gas field reported to Trend on Tuesday.
The drilling by Istiglal at the Shah Deniz gas condensate field with the use of a preventer block will be possible in November.
"Certification process of the preventer block will be completed by the end of this month when the drilling of deep wells will be possible," the source noted.
According to the source, drilling of shallow wells and proceeding to drill at Shah Deniz, will be held before the arrival of the preventer block along with the floating drilling vessel Istiglal.
"Work on the third well is currently in process. Two shallow wells have been previously drilled and their total amount is now four," the source noted.
Two sea platforms will be installed and more than 20 wells will be drilled for the extraction of an additional 16 billion cubic meters of gas a year in as part of the Shah Deniz 2 project. Top extraction volumes at the field within the first stage of development are estimated at nine billion cubic meters. According to forecasts, the volume of gas extraction will reach 24 billion cubic meters a year within the second development stage. Reserves of Shah Deniz field are estimated to 1.2 trillion cubic meters.
The contract on developing the Shah Deniz sea field was signed on June 4 1996. The contract participants are: BP (operator) with 25.5 per cent, Statoil- 25.5 per cent, NICO- 10 per cent, Total- 10 per cent, Lukoil- 10 per cent, TPAO- 9 per cent and SOCAR- 10 per cent.