BAKU

The BP-led international consortium said it had produced four billion barrels of oil on the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oilfield in Azerbaijan, marking an important milestone since the project’s beginning in 1994.

ACG is the largest oil field block in Azerbaijan developed by a BP-led international consortium. The first production sharing agreement for developing the block was signed on September 20, 1994, while a new deal on the joint exploitation of these fields and production sharing was reached on September 14, 2017. The agreement provides for the development of the areas by the end of 2049. The field started production from the Chirag platform in November 1997. Since 1994, around $40 billion of investment has been made into the development of the ACG field. ACG has also delivered about 50 billion cubic metres of associated gas in total.

Apart from BP, the project’s operator, members of the consortium are Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR, MOL, INPEX, Equinor, ExxonMobil, TPAO, ITOCHU and ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL).

The 4 billion barrels total production has been transported primarily via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and Western Route Export pipelines from the Sangachal terminal near Baku across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the world markets. To date, BTC has transported around 3.7 billion barrels of oil loaded mostly with ACG oil on 4,847 tankers.

“This is a great milestone that once again demonstrates that ACG is a world-class field,” Gary Jones, BP’s regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, said in a statement.

“As operator of ACG we are proud of the field’s amazing delivery story which will continue for many decades to come,” he said.

ACG currently has eight offshore platforms – six production platforms and two process, gas compression, water injection and utility platforms. The next development project of ACG – the Azeri Central East (ACE) – is currently under construction and is progressing on a plan with the first oil expected in 2023.