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Nigar Hasanova

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A seismic survey program will be conducted with new 4-dimensional (4D) high-precision subsea nodes in the Azeri-Chirag-Deep-Gunashli (ACG) field, Azernews was informed about this by bp-Azerbaijan, the operator of the ACG field development project.

It was reported that, in terms of the area to be covered by the study, the total cost, and the duration of the work to be carried out, this project will be the largest seismic data collection program ever carried out by bp in the world.

Focused on the exploration of the Balakhani and Fasila suites, the current productive layers of the ACG field, this program will cover an area of ​​740 square kilometers under the seismic source and 507 square kilometers under the receivers. The total cost of the program is about 370 million US dollars, and the implementation period is planned to be five years (2024-2028).

The planning of this long-term program started last year. Within the framework of the program, it is planned to carry out five monitorings within five years using subsea nodes, as well as one dual-source vessel (Murovdag) and one node vessel (Guba).

Roshni Musai, BP's vice president for geology and development in the regions of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkiye, said that ACG is the largest oil field operated by bp.

"It is very important both for us and for Azerbaijan and our partners. Our goal in carrying out this large-scale seismic research program is to obtain detailed information about the reservoir architecture and fluid contact (interphase contact) dynamics. We hope that the state-of-the-art 4D technology that will be used for this program will allow us to obtain new and deeper information about the bed. This will help us identify solutions to minimize future well contingencies and maximize the field's oil recovery for decades to come."

The program will be implemented by Caspian Geo LLC company.

It should be noted that the initial Production Sharing Agreement on ACG was signed in September 1994. In September 2017, the agreement was amended and revised and its term was extended until 2049. The revised agreement envisages maximizing ACG's economic benefits for Azerbaijan and shareholders over the next 31 years. ACG is a huge oil field in Azerbaijan. To date, more than 4.3 billion barrels (581 million tons) of oil have been produced from the field. Oil is mainly exported to world markets through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Western Export Pipelines.

By the end of the third quarter of 2023, a total of more than 43 billion US dollars had been invested in the development of the ACG field block. Currently, there are 9 offshore platforms in ACG: 7 production platforms and 2 platforms for technical processing, compression, irrigation, and utility purposes. The oil and gas obtained from the platforms are transferred to the Sangachal terminal located on land near Baku, one of the largest oil and gas terminals in the world.

During the first three quarters of 2023, ACG's total production averaged 368,000 barrels per day.

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