Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Azerbaijan has extracted 333.6 million tons of oil from Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) offshore oil and gas field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea since 1997, the beginning of its development.

The news was announced by Khoshbakht Yusifzade, the First Vice-President of Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR in an article published in the Respublika newspaper on May 8.

"Also, Azerbaijan has produced 95.5 billion cubic meters of gas since the beginning of the development of the field," he said.

Currently, 2.8 million tons of oil and 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas is extracted from 77 wells in ACG per month. Since May 1, Azerbaijan has sold 177.2 million tons of profit oil in the world market, which was produced at the ACG field.

"The volume of Azerbaijan's profit oil increases annually. Only in 2013, some 22.5 million tons (68.8 percent) out of 32.7 million tons of produced oil was accounted for profit oil of Azerbaijan," Yusifzade said.

The ACG block of fields produces Azeri Light oil with a sulfur content of 0.15 percent (35 degrees API).

The ACG block of fields has been working since 1997. Production started in the Chirag part of the field and continues successfully. It was followed by the Azeri Project; Central Azeri production started in February 2005, West Azeri began producing in December 2005, and East Azeri came on stream in October 2006.

The Deepwater Gunashli section launched production in April 2008.

He went on to noted that Azerbaijan has produced 51 billion cubic meters of gas and 13.3 million tons of gas condensate at the giant Shah Deniz gas condensate field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea since the beginning of its development.

"Since the beginning of the development of Shah Deniz, some 27.4 billion cubic meters of gas has been exported to Turkey and 3.9 billion cubic meters - to Georgia," Yusifzade said.

The Shah Deniz field, one of the world's largest gas-condensate fields, was discovered in 1999. Its reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. Overall, the field has proved to be a secure and reliable supplier of gas to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and Europe.

The gas to be produced at the second stage of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field development will be the main source of the Southern Gas Corridor, which envisages the transmission of the Caspian gas to the European markets.

Yusifzade also stressed as of May 1, Azerbaijan has supplied around 345 million tons of oil to the world markets through three pipelines and railway.

Around 244.6 million tons out of the total volume of exported oil fell to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, 67.7 million tons - to the Baku-Supsa pipeline, and 11.2 million tons - to the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline. Some 20.2 million tons of oil was supplied to world markets by railway.

The 1,768-km BTC pipeline became operational in June 2006. Since that time BTC has carried a total of over 1.9 billion barrels of crude oil and sent to world markets. BTC's throughput capacity is currently 1.2 million barrels per day.

In 2013, BTC exported about 247.2 million barrels of crude oil loaded on 329 tankers at Ceyhan.

The oil transported via BTC to world markets mainly comes from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shah Deniz fields in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. Also, crude oil from Turkmenistan continues to be transported via BTC. Since October 2013, transportation of some volumes of Tengiz crude oil through the BTC pipeline was resumed.

The proven oil reserves of Azerbaijan are estimated at two billion tons.

Azerbaijan extracted 43.1 million tons of oil and gas condensate in 2013, equal to 42.98 million tons in 2012. The country also produced 17.9 billion cubic meters of market gas which amounted to 17.24 billion cubic meters in 2012.