Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 13 / Trend E. Ismailov /
Two drilling rigs will be sufficient to implement the second phase of the Shah Deniz gas condensate field development, head of Stage 2 Development Ilgar Mammadzadeh said on Tuesday during a public hearing of the report on the social and environmental impacts of the Shah Deniz-2 project.
According to him, construction of additional settings within Shah Deniz-2 is not provided and in accordance with the schedule the floating drilling units named after Heydar Aliyev and Istiqlal will suffice.
"The possibility of building an additional drilling rig may be considered in case of a need for new projects. The schedule of drilling operations within the framework of the Shah Deniz 2 project is defined and the two listed rigs will be just enough for this project," Mammadzadeh said.
According to him, despite plans to drill more than 20 wells within Shah Deniz-2, construction of two platforms is considered economically viable.
As was noted during the public hearing, the peak of production within the Shah Deniz Stage 2 Development will start in 2022 and last for seven to eight years.
Drilling is planned to be undertaken from five clusters and the entire process will be completed in 2022. The first gas is expected to be produced as early as 2018.
Reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
The contract for development of the offshore Shah Deniz field was signed in June 1996. Participants to the agreement are BP (operator) - 25.5 per cent, Statoil - 25,5 per cent, NICO - 10 per cent, Total - 10 per cent, Lukoil - 10 per cent, TPAO - nine per cent and SOCAR - 10 per cent.