BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 8. The first oil from the Azeri Central East (ACE) platform will be received in the second quarter of 2024, Chairman of the Board of Turan Drilling & Engineering company, operating at the platform, Ole Maier exclusively told Trend .
“Our goal is to get the first oil in the second quarter of 2024. By bp's order, we are engaged in development drilling at ACE, which began on December 4, 2023,” he said.
Previously, bp expected the first oil production from ACE to be received in March 2024.
The ACE project is valued at $6 billion and aims to extract 100,000 barrels of oil per day from this new platform, supporting oil production in Azerbaijan's key oilfield block - the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) fields.
Maier noted that out of the total planned wells on ACE, numbering 48, in 2024, oil will be extracted from a few wells (around four), but the number of wells will gradually increase. At its peak, this platform will produce 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
In 2023, the ACG field block produced 17.8 million tons of oil, which is 12.7 percent less than the 2022 figure. Reaching the peak production on ACE will help offset this decline to some extent.
Overall, the ACG reserves are estimated at one billion tons of oil. The production has been ongoing since 1997, with more than half of the reserves already produced.