Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.17
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
BP and its partners are looking at various ways to unlock remaining barrels at Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, Vice President of BP Production for Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey region John Stephenson told Trend.
“We always look at opportunities how do we access the oil remaining. One of the options may be subsea. However, no decision has been made so far. We are looking with our partners at different ways we can unlock the remaining barrels,” he said.
Talking about the decline in production from West Chirag platform, Stephenson noted that the initial increase of production from West Chirag was due to the pre-drilled wells.
When the platform first started up, there were available wells for production instantly and then the production began to drop due to the lack of new wells, he added.
In general, as Stephenson noted, it is one of the best performing platforms.
West Chirag platform is part of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) complex which consists of six production platforms: Chirag 1, Central Azeri, West Azeri, East Azeri, Deepwater Gunashli, and West Chirag.
The West Chirag platform has been installed between the existing Chirag and Deepwater Gunashli platforms. First oil from the platform was extracted on 28 January 2014.
On September 20, 1994, the Government of Azerbaijan and a group of international oil companies representing eight countries signed the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli Production Sharing Agreement, which later became known as the “Contract of the Century”. The Contract was extended in September 2017 until mid-century.
From the start of production in November 1997 till the end of 2Q 2019, ACG produced about 488 million tonnes (more than 3.6 billion barrels) of oil.
ACG participating interests are: BP (30.37 percent), SOCAR (25 percent), Chevron (9.57 percent), INPEX (9.31 percent), Equinor (7.27 percent), ExxonMobil (6.79 percent), TPAO (5.73 percent), ITOCHU (3.65 percent), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.31 percent).
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