Azernews.Az

By Sara Israfilbayova

Roughly 85 billion cubic meters of gas and 21.2 million tons of condensate have been extracted from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field since the beginning of operation in 2006.

Rovnag Abdullayev, President of the state-owned energy company SOCAR announced about this in his article, published in the country’s Respublika newspaper, on September 20.

The Shah Deniz, discovered in 1999, is one of the world’s largest gas-condensate fields. The field is located on the deep water shelf of the Caspian Sea, 70 km south-east of Baku, in water depths ranging from 50 to 500 m.

Shah Deniz field's reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.

Abdullayev added that overall 25.6 million tons of oil and 18.7 billion cubic meters of gas were produced in Azerbaijan over eight months of 2017.

"Five million tons of oil and four billion cubic meters of gas accounted for SOCAR," he said.

Shah Deniz Stage 1 has the capacity to produce around 10 billion cubic meters of gas per annum (bcma) and approximately 50,000 barrels a day of condensate. Shah Deniz Stage 2, or Full Field Development (FFD) will add a further 16 bcma of gas production to the approximately 9 bcma produced by Shah Deniz Stage 1.

The project Shah Deniz Stage 2 is now over 92% complete in terms of engineering, procurement and construction, and remains on target for first gas from Shah Deniz Stage 2 in 2018. The gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans Adriatic Pipeline.

Abdullayev further mentioned that SOCAR has injected 1.4 billion cubic meters of gas into the country’s underground gas storage facilities since the beginning of the gas pumping season until September 1, 2017.

Currently, the active gas volume in Azerbaijan’s underground gas storage facilities amounts to 2.2 billion cubic meters, he said.

There are two underground gas storage facilities – Kalmaz and Garadagh – in Azerbaijan. Capacity of the two underground gas storage facilities allows to store more than 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas.

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