Chirag produced one-third of ACG’s total output: BP
Today marks the 15th anniversary of first oil production from the Chirag platform -- the first platform to commence production from Azerbaijan's Azeri, Chirag and Deepwater Gunashli fields in the Caspian Sea being developed by a BP-led international consortium.
Since then BP as operator of the ACG PSA has built and safely and reliably operated six additional platforms, including four production platforms, which have delivered over 2.1 billion barrels of oil, benefiting primarily the Azerbaijani people and ACG partners, as well as the region.
The ACG production was followed by the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline -- a world-class project, which was designed to link Azerbaijan to world markets, helping to strengthen economic and political links between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and the West and bringing further significant benefits to the country and the whole region. To date BTC has carried about 1,552 million barrels of crude oil from Azerbaijan to world markets loaded on 2013 tankers.
"We really are proud that to date Chirag has produced about 600 million barrels of oil which makes about one-third of ACG's total production," says Mark Thomas, BP's Vice-President on Operations for the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey (AGT) region. "And this is the delivery of a platform that was originally planned to only run 7 years. However, thanks to the excellent performance and commitment of the platform's professional team, Chirag still continues to operate to the highest standards along with ACG's new platforms and is expected to deliver for many years to come."
Some of the other benefits that ACG has to date delivered include total investment of $24.8 bn. Also, the project has led to the creation of jobs and development of national staff, with permanent jobs including contractors numbering over 6,000; over 12,000 temporary jobs were created during the construction phase.
As for social projects, total social spend in Azerbaijan by BP and co-venturers since the start of activities in Azerbaijan in 1994 till the end of the third quarter of 2012 was more than $56 miliion, with ACG accounting for about 30% of the amount, or over $17 million.
A landmark agreement on developing the ACG fields was signed with 13 energy majors from eight countries in Baku in 1994. ACG participating interests are: BP (35.83%), SOCAR (11.65%), Chevron (11.27%), Inpex (10.96%), Statoil (8.56%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.75%), Itochu (4.3%), and Hess (2.72%). Hess has sold its share in the project to India's ONGC, and the transaction will be completed in the first quarter of 2013.