Azernews.Az

BAKU – Shahdaniz, Azerbaijan’s largest gas field in the Caspian Sea, produced about 1.84 billion cubic meters of gas and 0.4 million tons (3.1 million barrels) of condensate in the first quarter of 2011, said BP Azerbaijan, which operates the project.

Thus, Shahdaniz production amounted to about 20.4m cubic meters of gas per day and about 34,400 barrels of condensate per day.

Since the start of Shahdaniz production in late 2006 till the end of the first quarter of 2011 about 52.9m barrels (6.7m tons) 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. Production from Stage 1 of the project is expected to be approximately 9 billion cubic meters of gas per year and about 50,000 bpd of condensate.

In Q1 Shahdaniz spent $47.9 million in operating expenditure and $125.8 million in capital expenditure. For the full year, BP Azerbaijan is planning to spend $169.9m in operating expenditure and $791.6m in capital expenditure on Shahdaniz activities.

During Q1 the field continued to produce from four wells to deliver gas to the markets of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The Shahdaniz field holds estimated reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.

Shahdaniz participating interests are: BP (operator – 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR (10%), LUKOIL (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%), and TPAO (9%).