Production at Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli hits 85m barrels

By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

The total production at Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) block of fields amounted to 85 million barrels in the half of 2021, BP Azerbaijan has said in its report.

According to the report, during the reported period, the total production on the block of fields amounted to 468,000 barrels per day. Of this, the Chirag field accounted for 30,000 b/d, Central Azeri for 111,000 b/d, West Azeri for 118,000 b/d, East Azeri for 78,000 b/d, Deepwater Gunashli for 88,000 b/d and West Chirag for 43,000 b/d.

At the end of the second quarter, 131 wells were producing oil, while 44 wells were used for water and eight for gas injection. In addition, ACG completed six oil producer and three injector wells.

Moreover, during the reported period, ACG delivered 1.6 billion cubic metres, or an average of 9.1 million cubic meters per day of ACG associated gas to SOCAR, primarily at the Sangachal Terminal, and to SOCAR’s Oil Rocks facility. The remaining associated gas produced was re-injected for reservoir pressure maintenance.

Likewise, the company spent about $266 million in operating expenditure and more than $846 million in capital expenditure on the ACG activities, in the first six months of the year.

Additionally, the total oil production from the ACG block of fields since the start of its operations has reached more than 3.9 billion barrels.

Furthermore, in January-June 2021, the Shah Deniz field produced around 10 billion cubic meters of gas and 1.9 million tonnes of condensate.

It should be noted that the existing Shah Deniz facilities’ production capacity is currently about 70 million standard cubic meters of gas per day.

Moreover, it was noted that during the reported period, the Shah Deniz field continued to provide deliveries of gas to markets in Azerbaijan (to SOCAR), Georgia (to GOGC and SOCAR), Turkey (to BOTAS), and to BTC Company in multiple locations. It was noted that gas deliveries to buyers in Europe, which started on December 31, 2020, also continued during the first half of 2021.

Likewise, in the first half of the year, more than $1.1 billion were spent in operating expenditure and around $366 million in capital expenditure, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz 2 project.

Additionally, in the quarter of 2021, the Shah Deniz 2 project achieved the start-up of the East South flank at 540m water depth - a major milestone planned for 2021 and delivered safely, on schedule and within the budget. Production from this deep-water flank commenced on June 30 following the successful completion of all related offshore construction and commissioning works. It is expected that the flank will be at full production rates in the third quarter of 2021.

BP opened its first office in Baku in June 1992 and has since then contributed to Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector through by operating projects such as, Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), Shah Deniz, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP).

The contract for the development of the ACG oil fields was signed on September 20, 1994, and entered force in December. The contract for the development of the ACG block was extended to 2050 in September 2017.

The shareholders in the ACG project are BP (operator, 30.37 percent), SOCAR (25 percent), MOL (9.57 percent), INPEX (9.31 percent), Equinor (7.27 percent), ExxonMobil (6.79 percent), TPAO (5.73 percent), ITOCHU (3.65 percent), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.31 percent).

The contract on the development of the Shah Deniz gas field was signed in 1996. Shareholders of Shah Deniz project are: BP (operator, 28.8 percent), TPAO (19 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), PETRONAS (15.5 percent), LUKOIL (10 percent) and NICO (10 percent).