Azerbaijan, Baku, October 12 /Trend E.Ismayilov/
A joint working group will identify the reason for a fall of oil production in Azeri Chirag Guneshli (ACG), the Azerbaijani section of fields in the Caspian Sea, a senior SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) representative reported on Friday.
According to the SOCAR representative, no one is safe from a reduction of production volumes regardless of a field's location.
"We are currently establishing a joint working group which will try to identify the reasons, find a solution to the situation and stabilise and increase production volumes," the SOCAR representative noted.
He added it is too early to make any statements on the reasons for the production decrease as the situation has to be completely analysed.
Previously Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated during his speech at the meeting of Cabinet of Ministers, dedicated to the total of the republic's social and economic development during the first nine months of 2012, that serious mistakes made by the international consortium (Azerbaijani international operation company) with BP as an operator, led to a sharp decline in oil production in the Azeri and Chirag fields. As a result, the total volume of lost revenue amounted to over $8 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 per cent), Chevron (11.27 per cent), Inpex (10.96 per cent), AzACG (11.6 per cent), Statoil (8.56 per cent), Exxon (eight per cent), TPAO (6.75 per cent), Itocu (4.3 per cent) and Hess (2.72 per cent). Hess has sold its share to Indian ONGC and the transaction will be completed in the first quarter of 2013.