BAKU

British oil major BP plans to undertake 15-days of maintenance work on its West Azeri oil platform, starting on Thursday,  a spokeswoman  for BP-Azerbaijan 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. Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR is a shareholder in both consortiums.

“Carrying out these works is aimed at ensuring the operation of the platform in a safe, reliable manner and without harming the environment for a long time,” Tamam Bayatly said.

SOCAR said earlier this month that BP-led consortiums would suspend West Azeri, Chirag and Shah Deniz oil and gas platforms for a 15-day period. of maintenance work in 2021.

The Chirag platform is expected to be suspended in June-July and Shah Deniz before the end of the 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 billion cubic metres (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, the 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.