Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr S. Aliyev / The Azerbaijani International Operating Company (AIOC) will suspend its production in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field (depending on weather conditions) for the first week of September in order to set additional equipment which will increase pumping of formation water and gas in Central Azeri, the President of ВР Azerbaijan, Bill Shredder, reported. ВР is currently operating AIOC.
According to Shredder, suspending the production as a consequence of oil export will not negatively affect the oil markets. The company had accounted for this suspension in its calculations two years ago. Platforms Chirag, Central, West, and East Azeri will be stopped at different times with several being launched earlier than others.
Two gas-compressor plants, a module to utilize formation water and other equipment will be set in the Central Azeri platform.
The work is planned to be completed within 18 days, according to the company. Formation water produced after oil processing will be delivered to the platform via a new pipeline and again pumped to the layer. At present daily production at ACG exceeds 730,000 barrels.
The parties involved in the production sharing agreement on Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field are BP (operator- 34.1%), ChevronTexaco (10.2%), SOCAR (10%), INPEX (10%), Statoil (8.6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.8%), Devon (5.6%), ITOCHU (3.9%) and Hess (2.7%).