SOCAR to drill additional wells at oldest offshore field
By Nigar Abbasova
Azerbaijan’s energy major SOCAR plans to drill some 10 additional wells at Oil Rocks, a unique offshore deposit of the country.
The company expects to receive from the new wells some 73,000 tons of oil and nearly 16,425 million cubic meters of gas on a yearly basis. Under the project, new manifold blocks will be designed on the rig base №2585, set at the depth of 44 meters.
Each well is estimated to provide some 20 tons of oil and 4,500 cubic meters of gas on a daily basis.
So far, some 182.86 million tons of oil and 14.09 billion cubic meters of gas were produced from 2,211 wells at the Oil Rocks field, located to the southeast of Absheron Archipelago. Oil prospecting with geological survey, structure drilling, seismic prospecting and preliminary drilling at the field started in 1945.
December 2016 became a new successful date in the oil industry of the country as annual production in Oil Rocks reached the level of 1 million tons for the first time since the country gained its independence.
Last year, SOCAR produced 7.52 million tons of oil from the country’s offshore and onshore fields.
SOCAR is involved in exploring oil and gas fields, producing, processing, and transporting oil, gas, and gas condensate, as well as oil and chemical products in domestic and international markets, and supplying natural gas to the industry and the public in Azerbaijan.
Gas production in the country is expected to stand at 28.39 billion cubic meters (bcm) by the end of 2017, the volume is down by 2.9 percent than the figure of 2016.
The forecast for oil production in 2017 stands at 39.797 million, which is 3.7 percent lower than the index fixed in 2016.
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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova
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