Shah Deniz partnership launches new project to reduce emissions

By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

The Shah Deniz partnership is launching a new project to reduce emissions, Azernews reports.

The partnership is commencing the defining stage of a new project which will allow the Shah Deniz Alpha (SDA) platform to receive its power supply from the Shah Deniz Bravo (SDB) platform through a subsea cable.

The project is designed to significantly reduce SDA’s operational emissions and increase the platform’s operational efficiency, providing a robust, long-term, high-availability power supply.

SDA’s electric power is currently supplied by five main power generators designed to be run by dual, gas, and diesel, fuel engines. The existing generators will be decommissioned once the new project becomes operational in 2024.

“We expect the project to provide a Significant Emission Rate (SERs) of around 20 kte CO2 per year reducing SDA's overall carbon footprint and adding to our and Shah Deniz partners’ decarbonization efforts. This will be a substantial contribution to achieving our aim to reduce emissions from our oil and gas operations and is in line with what we aim to achieve globally by working to significantly reduce our operational emissions, aiming for net zero by 2050 or sooner,” bp’s Vice President, Projects, for the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkiye region, Russia, Egypt, and Oman Cathal Kelly said.

The vice president added that the project will also help to achieve multiple other objectives by raising SDA’s operational efficiency and minimizing commercial gas delivery interruption risks.

As part of the new project, the Shah Deniz partnership recently awarded a front-end engineering design (FEED), turnaround engineering, and procurement support services contract to the SOCAR-KBR joint venture.

The scope of work of the $5.7 million contract includes the FEED services for decommissioning the existing main power generators on the SDA platform and the creation of a power supply system from the SDB platform via a subsea cable. This project will be delivered from SOCAR-KBR's Baku office to maximize local content.

The contract on the development of the Shah Deniz gas field was signed in 1996. Shareholders of the Shah Deniz project are BP (operator, 29.99 percent), LUKOIL (19.99 percent), TPAO (19 percent), SOCAR (14.35 percent), NICO (10 percent), and SGC (6.67 percent).

From the start of operations till the end of the first quarter of 2022, the Shah Deniz field has produced about 164 billion cubic meters of gas and 37 million tons of condensate. The field currently produces around 70 million cubic meters of gas and 105,000 barrels of condensate per day.