Azernews.Az

By Fatma Babayeva

Azerbaijan produced 8 million tons of oil in the first quarter of 2016, reads the report of BP Azerbaijan for the first quarter of 2016.

BP Azerbaijan is an operator of Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields, where the Azeri Light oil is being produced.

The daily oil output amounted to 651,000 barrels in Azerbaijan during the reporting period.

Azerbaijan produced 31.3 million tons of Azeri Light oil in 2015 compared to 31.5 million tons in 2014. In the meantime, operating expenses within the project totaled $137 million in January-March 2016, while the capital expenditures were $396 million.

The contract for the development of the ACG block of fields (so called contract of the century) was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserve of the block nears one billion tons.

The shareholders of the project are BP (35.78 percent), Chevron (11.27) percent, Inpex (10.96 percent), AzACG (11.65 percent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent).

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

With a 25.5% share, BP is also the operator of the Shah Deniz gas field, which production was commissioned in 2006. Stage 2 development of this gas condensate field is a giant project expected to open up Azerbaijan as a major gas supplier to the European market through a Southern Gas Corridor pipeline network.

In the meantime, BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline which pass through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to transport Caspian oil to the Mediterranean coast.

The company also signed a PSA agreement with SOCAR to explore and develop Shafag-Asiman structure in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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