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bp's Azeri offshore oil and gas fields still have a "long future", upstream executive vice-president Gordon Birrell told Argus, Azernews reports.

According to him, bp is working to boost production at the 1.2 trillion m³ Shah Daniz field and on initiatives to slow the natural output decline at the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil development.

G.Birrell said that Shah Deniz should reach its 26bn m³/yr plateau this year and bp is keen to boost output further. Infill drilling is under way to enhance recovery and bp is drilling a deep gas well beneath the main production horizon. "Clearly, if we have a big new deep discovery there, we'll look at developing it," Birrell says. "And it's good quality gas. It's now piped all the way to Italy, through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Türkiye, Greece, and Albania."

But bp and its partners in the AIOC consortium are doing what they can to boost ACG's longevity, Birrell says. "There's a long future for ACG. It's a giant oil field, it's great geology," he said while acknowledging that its "prolific" reservoirs decline over time. "Our job is to flatten that decline out, and that's exactly what we're doing right now." Azeri state-owned Socar, an AIOC partner holding 25pc, estimated recoverable reserves at around 7bn bl in 2009.

bp is working on "two big thrusts" at ACG. "Number one is the new Ace [Azeri Central East] platform," Birrell said. The platform is designed to process up to 100,000 b/d and will enable the drilling of a series of wells to the east of the ACG contract area — the underdeveloped side.

The second thrust involves maximizing full life-of-field recovery at ACG. "That means a couple of big things. The historical reservoir we've developed — the world-class Fasila reservoir — is now pretty mature," Birrell says. "We are starting to develop the upper Balakhani reservoir and that needs more energy… requiring more gas injection, more water injection to flatten out the decline."

The focus on enhanced gas and water injection began 18 months ago and bp is "starting to see encouraging signs that that decline is flattening out". This is "a great example of bp's petro-technical capability" because it needs to get the balance "absolutely right" — neither letting production drop too much nor failing to achieve full recovery from the fields” Birrell said.

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