Azernews.Az

BAKU – Azerbaijan and Turkey will sign an agreement by the end of 2010 on exporting Azerbaijani gas through the neighboring country and Turkey’s imports of gas to be produced during Phase 2 of developing the South Caucasus republic’s Shahdaniz field, Azerbaijani state energy firm SOCAR’s chief said Wednesday.

Rovnag Abdullayev told the press that Turkey's BOTAS, SOCAR and the Shahdaniz project shareholders are drafting the contract, in accord with the memorandum signed by the two countries last year.

Abdullayev said talks were also underway with Bulgaria on the sale of Shahdaniz gas.

Peak production during the first stage of Shahdaniz development is forecast at 9bn cubic meters. Gas production may be brought up to 25bn cubic meters per year under the second stage of development.

Shahdaniz holds estimated reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.

The Shahdaniz field produced about 6.9 billion cubic meters of gas and 1.9 million tons (14.7m barrels) of condensate in 2010. Average daily production was 19m cubic meters of gas and 40,200 barrels of condensate.

According to BP Azerbaijan, since the start of Shahdaniz production in late 2006 till the end of 2010, about 6.3 million tons (49.7 million barrels) of Shahdaniz condensate was exported to world markets.

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