Azernews.Az

BAKU – The BP-operated Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) is in the process of delivering three main power generation units to the Azerbaijani capital Baku under a $50 million contract to be used for an offshore oil project, BP said.

The units, which have been purchased from Rolls Royce, will be used for the Chirag Oil Project (COP) to provide power for the West Chirag platform to be installed on the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.

The transportation of the cargo is expected to take nearly four months to complete. The first power generation unit is scheduled to leave Mount Vernon in the U.S. this month with arrival in Baku expected in October before transportation via the Russian canals closes for the winter season.

Each unit weighs 185 tons (407,000 lbs) with a maximum output of 27 megawatts.

Chirag Oil Project envisages investments in the amount of $6 billion.

Outstripping drilling under the project will go on till the first half of 2012. Dede Gorgud rig will perform the drilling, with production from the platform expected to begin from late 2013.

In total, over 300 million barrels of oil are expected to be produced under the project until the end of the contract on ACG in 2024.

In 2010, 40.6 million tons of oil was produced from the ACG field compared to more than 40.3 million tons in 2009. Average daily oil production on the block amounted to 823,100 bpd last year.

ACG shareholders are: BP (operator - 35.8%), Chevron (11.3%), Socar (11.6%), Inpex (11%), Statoil (8.6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.7%), Itochu (4.3%) and Hess (2.7%).