SOCAR commissions highly productive offshore well

By Azernews

By Nigar Abbasova

Azerbaijan’s energy major SOCAR will additionally extract some 365 million cubic meters of gas and 54,740 tons of condensate annually due to commissioning a new well on the Umid gas field, located in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea.

“True depth of the well No. 14 is 6,352 meters. Gas and condensate are being extracted at the depth 6,317-6,282. The well has been commissioned with the output level of 600,000 cm of gas and 100 tons of condensate. After switching to an optimal regime the output is expected to amount to 1 million cm of gas and 600,000 tons of condensate”

The Umid field is located 75 kilometers from Baku, 40 kilometers away from the coast. The first geophysical work was carried out there in 1953. The operations were also conducted in 1972 by using modern methods. Nine wells were drilled from 1977 to 1992 there, none of which gave results.

Back in 2009, SOCAR started deep-water exploratory drilling on the Umid Structure, and in November 2010 the giant Gas-Condensate field was discovered. The field became the first one that SOCAR discovered with its own resources after Azerbaijan gained its independence.

Almost one billion cubic meters of gas has been produced since the beginning of development of the field.

Preliminary estimates proves that the Umid Structure has hydrocarbon reserves of 200 bcm of natural gas and 40 million tons of condensate. Two wells are currently in operation at the Umid field, and their daily production amounts to 750,000 cubic meters of gas and 230 tons of condensate.

SOCAR produced 5.73 billion cubic meters of gas from the country’s offshore and onshore fields using its own funds in January-November 2016, as compared to 6.32 billion cubic meters in the same period in 2015.