Azernews.Az

After completing the certification process of a block of preventers (BOP), Istiglal modified offshore drilling unit (MODU) started work at the Shah Deniz gas condensate field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, a source in oil and gas market told Trend news agency on Tuesday.

According to the source, testing work by the drilling unit is currently underway on one of the wells in the Shah Deniz field.

"After completion of this work, the drilling work will be carried out by the MODU in the shallow wells in the field," the source said.

Previously, due to lack of BOP as part of the pre-drilling program on the second stage of the Shah Deniz development, shallow wells were drilled at the field. This was necessary in order to implement the pre-drilling program and to avoid delays in the implementation of the project.

Two offshore platforms will be installed and more than 20 wells will be drilled for the production of an additional 16 billion cubic meters of gas a year within the Shah Deniz-2 project. Peak production in the field in the first stage of the development is expected to be at level of nine billion cubic meters. It is predicted that in the second stage of the field development, gas production can be brought up to 25 billion cubic meters a year.

Reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
The contract on development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 1996. The contract participants are: BP (operator) - 25.5 per cent, Statoil - 25.5 per cent, NICO - 10 per cent, Total - 10 per cent, Lukoil - 10 per cent, TPAO - 9 per cent and SOCAR - 10 per cent.