Azernews.Az

By Nigar Abbasova

Azerbaijan, the country with vast and successful experience in the energy sector revealed its oil and gas production indices.

The first vice-president of SOCAR Khoshbakht Yusifzade said that the energy-rich country has so far extracted some 76 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas and 19 million tons of condensate from its Shah Deniz (SD) field, which is located on the deep water shelf of the Caspian Sea. Daily production at SD, which is considered to be one of the world’s largest gas-condensate fields, currently stands at 28-29 million cm of gas and nearly 6,000 tons of condensate.

The country produced some 8.02 bcm of gas at the field in January-September 2016 (10 percent higher than in the same period of 2015), with nearly 2.64 bcm being used for the provision of domestic needs. The volume amounted to some 32.9 of the total sales of gas from the field, while the rest of the volume was exported to Turkey from Georgia, which receives 5 percent of the volume as a payment for transit.

The reserves of the field, which was discovered in 1999, are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million tons of condensate.

The shareholders in the contract are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

Annual production is expected to increase up to 16 bcm of gas within the framework of the Shah-Deniz 2 project. As part of Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and finalizing the construction of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). The cost of the second stage of development is estimated at $28 billion.

Oil production

The first vice president said the country has produced 412 million tons of oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea since November 1997. He mentioned that some 229 million tons of the produced oil accounted for profitable oil.

The Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field, which lies 120km off the coast of Azerbaijan, is considered to be the largest oil field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. Azeri Light oil grade that Azerbaijan sells to the world market is being produced at the field, while the daily oil output stood at 651,000 barrels in the first quarter of 2016. The crude produced in this field is among the lightest in the world, which is considered to be an advantageous quality, as it is less expensive to refine.

A contract for developing the ACG field, which was signed in 1994 on the development of three large oil fields including Azeri (113 km), Chirag (94 km) and Deepwater portion of the Gunashli field (82 km), became first offshore PCA agreement of the country. The agreement became known as a Contract of the Century. The proven oil reserves of the block amount to approximately one billion tons.

Energy export

The country has so far exported as many as 440 million tons of Azerbaijani oil to global markets. Some 310 million tons out of this volume was transported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

SOCAR exported some 715.9 mcm of gas to Georgia in January-September 2016, while the volume exported in 2015 stood at 1.36 mcm of gas. The company delivered some 167.3 mcm of gas within the implementation of swap operations with Iran. The Islamic Republic takes some 15 percent of the total volume of received gas, while the rest volume is being delivered to Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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