BP continues work on pre-drilling in Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field

Azerbaijan, Baku, October 14/Trend, E. Ismayilov/

Within the implementation of the second stage of development of the Azerbaijani offshore gas condensate field Shah Deniz, BP, which is the technical operator for the development of the field completed the drilling of well SDX-07, a source at the oil and gas market told Trend on Monday.

According to him, the designed depth of the well was 6,500 meters and its drilling was absolutely completed a few days ago.

"The drilling of the well was completed a few days ago and currently there is carried out work on drilling of the next well the designed depth of will also be 6,500 meters," the source said.

According to the source, the drilling of the new well is planned to be completed in 2014.

In order to produce an additional 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year, two offshore platforms constructed and over 20 subsea wells will be drilled within the Shah Deniz project. The peak production in the field within the first stage of development is expected to be at the level of 9 billion cubic meters. According to the prognosis, the volume of gas production within the second stage of the field's development can be brought up to 24 billion cubic meters per year.

Shah Deniz reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.

The contract to develop the offshore Shah Deniz field was signed on June 4, 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.