BAKU

BP said that oil output at its projects in Azerbaijan declined to 484,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter of 2021 from 524,000 bpd a year earlier.

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.

BP said that in the first quarter, ACG completed three oil producer and two injector wells.

The consortium spent more than $142 million in operating expenditure and more than $463 million in capital expenditure on ACG activities in the first three months of 2021.

Natural gas production at the major Shah Deniz gas field was 5.1 billion standard cubic metres (bcm) in the first quarter, up from 4.7 bcm in the same period last year. Condensate output was around 1 million tonnes, almost the same as the year ago.

The BP-led consortium, which develops Shah Deniz project, has been pumping gas from the giant 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 its output in 2018, adding 16 bcm of gas production capacity at its peak to bring total capacity to 26 bcm.

BP said that around $688 million was spent in operating expenditure and more than $181 million in capital expenditure, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz II project.

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.

Azerbaijan started commercial natural gas supplies to Europe from the second stage of the Shah Deniz project via its $40-billion Southern Gas Corridor in December 2020, when the corridor’s last part, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), 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.