Azernews.Az

By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Drilling work at Azerbaijan’s Karabakh oil and gas field will be launched in the last quarter of 2019.

SOCAR's Caspian Drilling International company told Trend that it is planned to complete the reactivation of the Dede Gorgud semi-submersible drilling rig in September, then it will be sent for drilling at the Karabakh field by order of the Norwegian Equinor company.

Drilling at the Karabakh field will last approximately three months or more depending on the progress of the work.

The company also said that after the work at the Karabakh field, the drilling rig will be moved to the neighboring Aypara area to drill the first exploratory well.

The Aypara structure is located 25 kilometers north-west from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field and 90 kilometers away from Baku.

In accordance with Equinor’s project, the well at Aypara will be standard, it will be drilled vertically to the depth of 3,400 meters with the water depth of 140 meters. This may take two or three months.

The contract concluded between Equinor and Azerbaijan’s Caspian Drilling Company (CDC) envisages drilling two wells by CDC at the Karabakh field for Equinor, where Equinor serves as project operator for the field development with participation of SOCAR. Equinor and SOCAR hold 50 percent stake each in the project.

Since 1992, Norwegian multinational energy company Equinor has been operating in Azerbaijan’s energy sector. Jointly with the state oil company SOCAR and other international companies, Equinor has worked to help Azerbaijan’s thriving oil and gas industry realize its full potential.

Today Equinor has interest in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil field, as well as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which runs from Baku to the south Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.

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Mirsaid Ibrahimzade is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @MirsaidIbrahim1

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