By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

The total production at Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) block of fields amounted to 44 million barrels in the first quarter 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 484,000 barrels per day. Of this, the Chirag field accounted for 30,000 b/d, Central Azeri for 112,000 b/d, West Azeri for 130,000 b/d, East Azeri for 79,000 b/d, Deepwater Gunashli for 89,000 b/d and West Chirag for 44,000 b/d.

At the end of the quarter, 133 wells were producing oil, while 45 wells were used for water and 8 for gas injection. In addition, ACG completed 3 oil producer and 2 injector wells.

Moreover, during the reported period, ACG delivered 1 billion cubic metres, or an average of 11.6 million cubic meters per day, of ACG associated gas to SOCAR, primarily at the Sangachal Terminal, and to SOCAR’s Oil Rocks facility. The remained of the associated gas produced was re-injected for reservoir pressure maintenance.

Likewise, the company spent over $142 million in operating expenditure and more than $463 million in capital expenditure on the ACG activities, in the first three 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-March 2021, the Shah Deniz field produced around 5.1 billion cubic meters of gas and 1 million tonnes of condensate.

It should be noted that the existing Shah Deniz facilities’ production capacity is currently over 58 million 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, Georgia, Turkey, and to BTC Company in multiple locations.

Likewise, in the first quarter of the year, $688 million were spent in operating expenditure and more than $181 million in capital expenditure, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz 2 project.

Additionally, during the first quarter of 2021, the Shah Deniz 2 project achieved further major milestones in progressing the production start-up from the deep-water East South Flank (at 540m water depth) which is planned for the second quarter of 2021. This will follow completion of the related offshore construction and commissioning works which are progressing successfully to meet the start-up delivery schedule.

BP first arrived in Azerbaijan and opened its first office in Baku in June 1992. Over the past years, in partnership with the Azerbaijani government and its co-venturers, the BP-operated world-class projects such as Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), Shah Deniz, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) have contributed to the development of the Caspian Sea as a modern hydrocarbon province.

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).