He said repair of the technical fault which caused shutdown are being repaired, APA reports.

"We are working on SDA-01 and SDA-02 wells. We expect production rate will increase in 2007. The peak of Phase 1 stable gas output will be 8.6bln cu m," he noted.

He said Shah Deniz Field is expected to spend $183mln operating expenditures and $334mln capital expenditures for 2007.

65,000 barrels a day (in oil equivalent) are planned to be produced, and that is to say 2.5bln cubic meters of gas and 17,000 cu m of condensate will be produced.

He said that during 2006 the project spent $20mln of the planned $59mln operating expenditures and $705mln of the planned $771mln capital expenditures.
Gas output in Shah Deniz Field has been indefinitely suspended since Monday, Jan. 22.

Technical failure had occurred in the first well in early January which resulted in gas leakage. On Jan. 14 the production was resumed for an after-repair trial. However, it was decided to shut down the well again for repair on Jan. 22 for complete elimination of the failure.

BP is the 25% owner and operator of Shah Deniz, which is believed to contain 1 trln cubic metres of gas, making it the largest gas discovery ever made by the group.

The $4.5bln Shah Deniz project went on stream in December, 2006 and is expected to produce 8.6 bln cubic metres of gas a year. Shah Deniz gas is being pumped to Turkey, onward to Europe through Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline.