BAKU

British oil major BP plans several maintenance works on oil and gas platforms in Azerbaijan in 2021, Ibrahim Akhmedov, Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) spokesman, said.

A BP-led consortium produces oil at Azerbaijan’s giant off-shore Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oilfields, which account for most of the country’s oil production. Another international consortium that is also led by BP produces natural gas at the major Shah Deniz field. SOCAR is a shareholder in both consortiums.

Akhmedov said that maintenance shutdowns would take place at West Azeri, Chirag and Shah Deniz platforms. BP confirmed the information. Each maintenance work will last for around two weeks.

He said that West Azeri would be shut down at the end of April, Chirag – in June-July, while Shah Deniz – before the end of this year.

BP conducts regular maintenance works at its platforms every year.

ACG offshore fields are the largest in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian basin. Its reserves are estimated at 7 billion barrels. In 2017 BP and SOCAR extended the production-sharing agreement for ACG until 2050. Following the extension, ACG’s $6-billion development project – Azeri Central East (ACE) was sanctioned in April 2019 and is currently at the executive stage with the first oil expected in 2023.

Other participants of the ACG project are Hungary’s MOL, U.S. ExxonMobil, Norway’s Equinor and Japan’s Inpex.

Oil from the ACG is shipped via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline through Georgia and Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main oil export route.

The consortium, which develops Shah Deniz project, has been pumping gas from the offshore field’s first phase since 2006, delivering more than 10 bcm a year of gas to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

The second phase started output in 2018, adding 16 bcm of gas production capacity at its peak to bring total capacity to 26 bcm.

Azerbaijan started commercial natural gas supplies to Europe from Shah Deniz II via its $40-billion Southern Gas Corridor in December 2020, when the corridor’s last part, Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, was launched. The project is aimed at reducing Europe’s dependence on natural gas supplies from Russia, which currently controls 34 percent of the continent’s gas market.

Azerbaijan aims to supply European gas markets with 10 bcm of gas a year, including 8 bcm to Italy and a combined 2 bcm to Greece and Bulgaria.

Apart from BP and SOCAR, participants of the Shah Deniz consortium are Turkey’s TPAO, Malaysia’s Petronas, Russia’s LUKoil and Iran’s NIOC.