BAKU
Petrofac, a British provider of oilfield services to the international oil and gas industry, has won a new contract in a joint venture with Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR to work on the Azeri Central East (ACE) project operated by British oil company BP in Azerbaijan.
The contract, worth about $25 million, includes the provision of commissioning technicians and other specialist personnel, mobilisation and associated services to support the project at both onshore and offshore work sites in-country. The SOCAR-Petrofac joint venture has won numerous contracts with BP in the Caspian region since 2019.
“This latest contract award builds on our expanding footprint in-country, the SOCAR-Petrofac joint venture is well-positioned to support BP’s operations more widely in the Caspian Sea,” Patty Eid, SOCAR-Petrofac Board member, said in a statement. “The development is already generating a significant number of jobs and our scope of work will involve the mobilisation of around 150 specialist personnel over the duration of the contract, and the provision of all associated support services, for the safe and successful performance of the commissioning work.”
The $6 billion ACE project is the latest development phase in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) fields. With estimated reserves of 7 billion barrels, the ACG offshore fields are the largest in Azerbaijan’s share of the Caspian basin. In 2017, BP and SOCAR extended their production-sharing agreement for the project to 2050. Following this extension, ACE was approved in April 2019, with the first oil expected in 2023.
Khalik Mammadov, SOCAR vice-president for HR, IT and regulations said: “The service sector has become one of SOCAR’s core activities in recent years. It plays an important role in our corporate development.”
Other participants in the ACG project include 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.