Azernews.Az

BAKU – BP Azerbaijan, the top foreign investor in the country’s oil and gas sector, on Wednesday presented its report covering sustainable development in Azerbaijan in 2009.

The company’s official, Rashad Bayramov, said BP’s oil production from the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) block in the Caspian Sea last year exceeded 40 million tons, or more than 298 million barrels. Average daily production rate was 817,700 barrels of oil.

A total of 1.343 billion barrels of oil was produced in 1997-2009, according to BP Azerbaijan’s Sustainability Report 2009.

Bayramov said production from Shahdaniz, Azerbaijan’s largest gas field in the Caspian operated by BP, amounted to about 6.2bn cubic meters of gas and around 1.7m tons of condensate and the company delivered about 3.6bn cubic meters of ACG-associated gas to Azerbaijan.

According to Bayramov, three of BP’s 15 most prolific production wells in the world were operated at the Shahdaniz field and five at the ACG block.

He also said 84 percent of BP Azerbaijan’s specialists are Azerbaijani nationals.

"Overall, BP had 2,328 full-time employees in Azerbaijan in 2009, of whom 1,929 were men and 399 women. 117 Azerbaijani citizens held high executive positions at the company last year. Also, more than 200 local nationals were hired in this period."

Bayramov said the company spent $132m on sustainable development projects, including those covering the development of entrepreneurship, and $3.4m had been allocated for over 70 community programs.

Bayramov said the BP Azerbaijan Sustainability Report 2008 had been largely welcomed in the country. More than 200 people, including students and media representatives, participated in four feedback sessions. In addition to that, BP Azerbaijan received feedback from the government and other external parties.

Bayramov said BP and its co-venturers did business with 2,152 companies in Azerbaijan in 2009 against 2,600 in 2008. Of these companies 309 (14%) were SMEs compared to 12.6% in 2008.

The Sustainability Report 2009 is an annual report issued by BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited, in its capacities as operator and manager of the Joint Operating Company for the ACG field and as manager of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline Company, and by BP Exploration (Shahdaniz) Limited, as operator of the Shahdaniz field and as technical operator of the South Caucasus Pipeline Company.

Each of these entities provided information relevant to its project and made any statements applicable to its project.