TPG-500, a self-elevating platform, built for oil and gas extraction at Shah-Deniz field, will be send for installation at the sea, the president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, Rovnag Abdullayev, told Trend.

$1.35bn was spent on the platform building. The total cost of the project, including upgrade of Zykh building site, is $1.6bn.

Total weight of the platform is 32,000 tons. The platform has capacity to drill wells with the depth of more than 7,000 meters and deflection radius of more than 3,000 meters. Platform installations are capable of extracting 28.5 million sq. m of gas and 60,000 barrels of oil per day. TPG-500 will explore 12 wells in total. Four of them were already drilled in the frames of the outdistancing drilling project.

First gas is expected to run via South-Caucasus pipeline on 30 September 2006.