Azernews.Az

BAKU – About 3.6 billion cubic meters of gas and 1 million tons (7.7 million barrels) of condensate were produced from Shahdaniz, Azerbaijan’s largest gas field in the Caspian Sea, during the first half of 2010, said BP Azerbaijan, the project operator.

Thus, about 20 million cubic meters of gas per day and about 42,700 barrels of condensate per day were extracted.

For the full year the company plans to produce 7.6bn cubic meters (around 269 billion cubic feet) of gas and 2.01m tons (around 16 million barrels) of condensate.

Since the start of Shahdaniz production in late 2006 till the end of the first half of 2010 about 42.4m barrels of Shahdaniz condensate was exported to world markets.

Production will increase as new platform-drilled wells are brought on stream over the next few years. Plateau production from Stage 1 is expected to be 8.6 billion cubic meters of gas per year and about 45,000 bpd of condensate.

During the first half the field continued to produce from four wells to off-take points in Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Turkish border. The gas from Shahdaniz Stage 1 continues to be sold to Azerbaijan, GOGC (Georgia), BOTAS and the BTC Company, the international pipeline consortium.

During the first half Shahdaniz spent $81.3m in operating expenditure and $162.2m in capital expenditure.

For the full year BP Azerbaijan are planning to spend $177.8m in operating expenditure and $604.8m in capital expenditure on Shahdaniz activities.

Shahdaniz participating interests are: BP (operator – 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), LUKOIL (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%), and TPAO (9%).