Azernews.Az

By Nigar Abbasova

Some 77 percent of the preparatory work for starting the delivery of Azerbaijani gas in 2018 as part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz field’s development has been completed, said Gordon Birrell, BP's Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

Gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018 via the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and to Europe by 2020 via the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), he added.

Azerbaijan will export 6 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year of Shah Deniz gas to Turkey and 10 bcm to the European market

The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The shareholders in the contract are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

The reserve of Shah Deniz field is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million tons of condensate.

Shah Deniz Stage 2, or Full Field Development is a giant project that will add a further 16 billion cubic meters per year (bcm) of gas production to the approximately 9 bcm produced by Shah Deniz Stage 1. The cost of the Stage 2 development amounts to $25 billion.

Meanwhile, Asian Development Bank (ADB) earlier issued a grant worth $1 million as the Project Preparatory Technical Assistance (PPTA) within the development of the second phase of the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field. Agreement on the PPTA was signed on June 6, 2016, and came into force on the same day.

BP’s office was opened in Baku in 1992. Since then, the company participated in a series of the upstream projects in the country.

BP Azerbaijan is also an operator of Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields, where the Azeri Light oil is being produced, while the daily oil output stood at 651,000 barrels in the first quarter of 2016. The company also operates Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which carries oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gumashli (ACG) field and condensate from Shah Deniz across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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