Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct,11 / Trend, E.Ismayilov /
The company BP is fully committed to Azerbaijan and working with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) to address Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli production issues as quickly as possible, BP Azerbaijan told Trend on Thursday.
Yesterday addressing a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers to discuss the results of the country's socio-economic development in nine months of 2012, and outline further priorities, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said that serious mistakes of international consortium (Azerbaijan International Operating Company), operator of which is the company BP, led to a sharp decline in oil production on the Azeri and Chirag fields.
The Head of State said the oil production forecast from the Azeri and Chirag fields presented to Azerbaijan, was 46.8 million tons in 2009, whilst only 40.3 million tons were extracted.
In 2010, the forecast was 42.1 million tons, while actual production was 40.6 million tons. In 2011, the forecast was 40.2 million tons, but actual production was 36 million tons.
"The forecast for 2012 is 35.6 million tons. Given current production, it can be assumed that bp will not be able to extract more than 33 million tons of oil from Azeri and Chirag by the end of the year ", said the President.
According to President Aliyev, if to sum up all the figures, based on the oil price of $100 per barrel -- considering the price was higher in these years -- it is obvious that Azerbaijan received 8.1 billion dollars less in direct revenue.
Up to now, the bp-led consortium invested $28.7 billion in the Azeri and Chirag oil fields and made a revenue of $73 billion.
The contract on the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli full field development was signed in 1994.
Participants of the project to develop Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli are: BP (operator - 35.83 percent), Chevron (11.27 percent), Inpex (10.96 percent), AzACG (11.6 percent), Statoil (8.56 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itocu (4.3 percent) and Hess (2.72 percent). Hess has sold its share to Indian ONGC, the transaction will be completed in the first quarter of 2013.