Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend / On 28 August the President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Rovnak Abdulayev, received a delegation headed by South Korea's Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, Lee Hun-jae. Rovnak Abdullayev said that a new stage of active cooperation began.
He voiced his hope for the future development of cooperation between SOCAR and the Korean National Oil Corporation KNOC.
Hun expressed his confidence that KNOC will cooperate with SOCAR and BP on the Inam project.
The Korean National Oil Company (KNOC) and the British-Dutch company RD Shell have reached an agreement to purchase 20% of Shell's 25% share in the Production Sharing Agreement on Development and Exploitation in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian. Participants in the Inam project operated by BP with a 25% stake are SOCAR with 50% and Shell with 25%. Therefore, once KNOC joins the project, the project's participants will be as follows: BP - 25%, SOCAR - 50%, KNOC - 20% and Shell - 5%.
Earlier the Korean company voiced its willingness to purchase 20% of SOCAR's 50% stock in this project. However, SOCAR decided not to sell its share in the project in the exploration stage. SOCAR's refusal may be explained by that they do not want to take financial risks because its share in the project will be financed by other participants of the project; BP and Shell.
The Korean oil company officially said Korean specialists had estimated the technical data and suggested oil reserves at Inam to be quite high, although there is a possible high-risk factor. Therefore, KNOC requested that SOCAR formulate a reserve re-estimation of this field