Azernews.Az

BAKU – A professional holiday of oil and gas industry workers – the Oil Workers’ Day – is celebrated in Azerbaijan on Monday.

The Oil Workers’ Day has been celebrated for already 16 years. The coincidence of this date with the day of signing the Contract of the Century is not accidental.

A production sharing agreement (PSA) on Azerbaijani Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore fields in the Caspian Sea, which is called the Contract of the Century, was signed on September 20, 1994.

Exactly this contract revived the oil and gas industry of Azerbaijan and ensured its subsequent growth and prosperity. Development of energy sector has led to the growth of the non-oil industries as well.

In subsequent years, many significant events took place in the oil industry of Azerbaijan: about 30 contracts were signed on a number of offshore and onshore fields, new terminals were constructed, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipelines were launched.

The Contract of the Century is seen as the bulwark of Azerbaijan’s economic policy, since the deal has given a boost to the development of the whole economy of the country.

Participants to the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore block development project are BP (operator, 37.43 percent), Chevron (11.27 percent), SOCAR (10 percent), INPEX (10.96 percent), Statoil (8.56 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent), Hess (2.72 percent). The Contract is valid for 30 years.