Azernews.Az

BP Azerbaijan, the operator of large-scale energy projects in the country, produced 146 million barrels, or about 20 million tons of oil, from five platforms at the major Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) fields in the Caspian Sea in the first half of 2009. Thus, average daily production was 806,000 barrels, the company said on Monday.
111,700 barrels per day were extracted from the Chirag platform, while over 173,200 bpd - from Central Azeri, 266,800 bpd from West Azeri, 142,800 bpd from East Azeri, and the remaining 111,600 bpd from Deep-Water Gunashli.
According to BP Azerbaijan, the company transferred some 11.5m cubic meters of associated gas a day to Azerbaijan`s state oil company SOCAR. Initially, the plan envisioned delivering at least 1.45 billion cubic meters this year, but the target was exceeded in January-June, as 2.1bn cu. m. were delivered.
The ACG project`s operating expenses stood at $348m, while main expenses - at $488m, in the first half-year. In total, the figures are forecast at the level of $839m and at 1.639bn in 2009.

Exports
BP Azerbaijan exported more than 806,000 bpd of oil and 665.5m standard cubic feet of gas a day in January-June from the Sangachal Terminal, one of the world`s largest terminals, which holds Azerbaijan`s oil.
Azerbaijan`s oil is transported to world markets mainly through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) main export pipeline, which passes through Georgia and Turkey, while gas is exported via the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), a section of a major conduit transporting gas produced from Azerbaijan`s biggest offshore field Shahdaniz. The western route pipeline, Baku-Supsa, is in operation as well, and over 91,000 bpd were pumped to the Supsa terminal on the Black Sea in the reporting period.
On May 1, oil exports from Sangachal hit a record high in 2009 of 1,001,270 barrels.
BP Azerbaijan, which operates the BTC pipeline, also continues expanding the Sangachal Terminal. Presently, daily processing capacity of the terminal is 1.2m barrels of oil and 39.5m cu. m. of gas.
About 650m barrels, or 87m tons of crude, have been transported to world markets through the BTC pipeline from Ceyhan since the first tanker was lifted from the Turkish Mediterranean port in June 2006. 8m barrels of condensate were transported via the BTC in this period.
Main expenses on running the BTC pipeline constituted $38m in the first half-year, with total spending of $143m forecast for 2009.

Gas production
BP Azerbaijan, which also operates the project on developing Azerbaijan`s offshore field, Shahdaniz, also said 3.4bn cubic meters of gas and 900,000 tons of condensate were produced from the field in January-June.
A total of 7.5bn cu. m. of gas and 1.9m tons of condensate will be produced from Shahdaniz in 2009, according to projections.
Over 664m standard cubic feet of gas (19m cu. m.) and 40,000 barrels of condensate a day were produced from five wells at Shahdaniz in the mentioned period. Production is expected to increase further as new wells come on stream in the coming years.
The peak in Shahdaniz production is projected at 8.6bn cu. m. a year and 45,000 barrels of condensate a day during Phase 1 of the project.
Phase 2 of Shahdaniz development is scheduled to begin in 2012-2013. Talks are ongoing with Russia, Turkey and a number of European countries on the exports of gas to be produced during this stage.
Shahdaniz launched production in 2006. The field holds estimated reserves of 2 trillion cubic meters of gas, according to official figures.