The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) approved the drilling program for this year by the Azneft Producing Unit (PU) on extracting oil and gas, SOCAR told Trend .
Under the program, about РЎРѕРіР"асно 132,000 meters are supposed to be drilled. This volume is equivalent to the drilling scope for 2005. However, despite the ongoing production drilling no increase in oil production is foreseen. SOCARs efforts are currently aimed at maintaining of the existing production volumes.
From the total drilling volume about 1 500 meters will fall at exploration drilling. This index is also equal to the last year index. SOCAR does not perform exploration drilling of more wells for several years.