Volume of country's gas exports revealed
By Sara Israfilbayova
Azerbaijan exported 2.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas worth $498.84 million in January-May 2018.
The State Customs Committee said that during this period natural gas exports fell by 11.46 percent year-on-year and cost by 3.17 percent.
The export of natural gas amounted to 6.77 percent of total exports for 5 months of the year.
Azerbaijan has a large number of oil and gas fields and promising structures in the Caspian Sea. One of them is the block of oil and gas fields Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), proven oil reserves of which are estimated at 1.2 billion tons, while gas reserves reach 350 billion cubic meters.
Another large field is the Shah Deniz gas condensate field, reserves of which are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. Within the second stage of field development, the volume of gas production can be increased to 24 billion cubic meters per year, according to forecasts.
There are also such deposits as Absheron (350 billion cubic meters), Umid (200 billion cubic meters), and the perspective field Babek (400 billion cubic meters).
Azerbaijani gas is currently exported directly by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR to Iran and Georgia, and by the Shah-Deniz consortium via the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum gas pipeline to Georgia and Turkey.
A contract for development of ACG block of oil and gas fields was signed in 1994 for 30 years.
Thirteen companies from eight countries (Azerbaijan, the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, Turkey, Norway, Japan, Saudi Arabia) have participated in signing of the “Contract of the Century”.
The agreement will cover the development of the field until 2050 and will add significant resource development potential. The document specifies the key commercial terms for the future development of the ACG field and enables the parties to conclude negotiations and finalize fully-termed agreements in the next few months.
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Sara Israfilbayova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Sara_999Is
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