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SOCAR gas production to reach 19 billion cubic meters in 2019

18 November 2019 10:34 (UTC+04:00)
SOCAR gas production to reach 19 billion cubic meters in 2019

By Abdul Kerimkhanov

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) expects 19 billion cubic meters of gas from the Shah Deniz field in 2019, while production will increase to 24 billion cubic meters in 2021, SOCAR’s Vice President for field development Yashar Latifov has said.

“Currently, SOCAR seeks to significantly increase the production of Azerbaijani gas, primarily due to the progress in Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz field development. This year we expect 19 billion cubic meters of gas from this field, next year we will increase production to 22 billion cubic meters and up to 24 billion cubic meters in 2021,” said Latifov in an interview with Petroleum-Economist.

The government previously forecasted production from the Shah Deniz field in the amount of 17.39 billion cubic meters of gas for current year.

Latifov recalled that in 2018, more than 30 billion cubic meters of gas were produced in Azerbaijan, of which 6.5 billion cubic meters was SOCAR’s own production, the rest was natural gas from the Shah Deniz field and associated gas from the Azeri-Chirag block -Guneshli, 75 percent of which was then re-injected into the reservoirs.

BP Azerbaijan says, in January-September 2019, as many as 12.4 billion cubic meters of gas and 2.6 million tons of condensate were produced from the Shah Deniz field. Currently, the capacity of the existing production system at the Shah Deniz field is about 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year or 56 million cubic meters of gas per day.

In 2018, BP Azerbaijan produced 11.5 billion cubic meters of gas and 2.5 million tons of condensate from the above mentioned field.

The Shah Deniz gas field remains the biggest discovery of BP after the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska. SOFAZ (Azerbaijani Oil Fund) has so far earned $2.5 billion from the development of Shah Deniz.

The agreement on the exploration, development and shared production of promising areas of Shah Deniz was signed on June 4, 1996. The agreement on the division of production was ratified on October 17, 1996.

The project participants are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), LUKOIL (10 percent), NİKO (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

Currently, gas production from the Shah Deniz field is carried out as part of Stage 1 from the Alfa platform and as part of Stage 2 from the Bravo production platform.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

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