Azernews.Az

By Gulgiz Dadashova

Azerbaijan has overcome the period of decline in oil production, President of the Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev said on September 20.

He said the rates of decline were completely overcome both by SOCAR at its own fields, and on Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields, developed jointly with foreign partners.

According to the State Statistics Committee, in January-February 2013, Azerbaijan produced about 7.2 million tons of oil and gas condensate, which is 3.6 percent less than in the same period of 2012.

In 2012, production of oil and gas condensate in Azerbaijan was 42.98 million tons, which is 5.3 percent less than in 2011.

Today, oil production figures show that the decline in production has stopped and a slight increase is possible by late 2013, Abdullayev said.

The main volume of oil produced in Azerbaijan falls on the ACG offshore field. This area produces Azeri Light oil with a sulfur content of 0.15 percent (35 degrees API).

The giant ACG block of oil fields has been producing since 1997. The production started from the Chirag section of the field and it still continues successfully, this was followed by Azeri Project - Central Azeri production started in February 2005, West Azeri started in December 2005, and East Azeri came on stream in October 2006 with the Deepwater Gunashli section starting production in April 2008. The next step of ACG development - Chirag Oil Project (COP) is expected to begin production later this year. To date the field has produced about 2.2 bn barrels of oil.