Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
Output from Azerbaijan’s major gas field, Shah Deniz, in the Caspian Sea rose by 10 percent in January-September 2016, said Rahman Gurbanov, vice president for oil and gas transportation and gas facilities at Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR, in his interview published by Natural Gas World (NGW) Nov. 2.
The BP-led project produced 8.02 billion cubic meters of gas, said Gurbanov.
He added that Azerbaijan purchased 2.64 billion cubic meters of Shah Deniz gas itself to compensate for the gas deficit in the domestic market.
“This volume accounts for 32.9 percent of the total sold gas from Shah Deniz. Accordingly, the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) hasn’t received any money from gas sales of Shah Deniz since June,” he added. “SOFAZ’s income for the first five months of 2015 stood at $64 million.”
SOCAR’s own commercial gas output (from fields operated by Azneft Production Union) was 4.22 billion cubic meters over the period, he said.
However, SOCAR’s total output from fields, including its share from Shah Deniz stood at 4.71 billion cubic meters, while the country’s total gas output, including the flaring gas reached about 22.29 billion cubic meters, added Gurbanov.
A contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The shareholders in the contract are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).
As part of the Stage 2 of development of the Shah Deniz field, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.
The reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million tons of condensate.
Shah Deniz Stage 2 will add a further 16 billion cubic meters per year of gas production to the approximately 9 billion cubic meters per year produced by Shah Deniz Stage 1.
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