Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

The North Caspian Operating Company - the operator of the North Caspian Project has produced the first barrels of oil at the giant Kashagan field located in the Kazakh section of the Caspian Sea, the consortium reported.

The North Caspian Operating Company B.V. announced today that the first well in the Kashagan field was reopened and first oil volumes were produced.

Earlier, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited the facilities of the Kashagan project. That day was marked as the beginning of final preparation for launch of the facilities in the project.

Kashagan is one of the largest fields discovered in the past 40 years. Recoverable oil reserves of Kashagan are estimated at 11 billion barrels, whereas total geological crude reserves stand at 35 billion barrels. It is believed to be the largest oil field in the world after Prudo Bay in Alaska. Besides, natural gas reserves are estimated at over 1 trillion cubic meters.

The Kashagan commissioning is a sequential process that involves more than 40 actions preceding the commencement of production and gradual reaching of the target level due to the scale and complexity of the project.

Production is planned to gradually increase over the second half of 2013. It is expected that around 180,000 barrels per day will be extracted at the first phase, and the figure will reach 370,000 bpd during the second phase.

Experts believe that the increase of oil production in Kazakhstan completely depends on the start of the Kashagan output as it is currently the only oil field capable of significantly boosting domestic oil production.

The future development projects would open up the opportunities to increase the production volumes significantly and this will turn Kashagan into one of the largest suppliers for the world energy market.