Azerbaijan produces 428.4M tons of oil from ACG

By Kamila Aliyeva

Azerbaijan has produced 428.4 million tons of oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea since November 1997, said Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice president of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR.

He made the remarks during the 24th Caspian International Oil and Gas Conference in Baku on June 1.

He added that investments and operating costs for the entire period of the ACG’s development have exceeded $42 billion.

ACG is a super-giant field located about 100 km east of Baku. It is the biggest producing oil field in the Caspian Sea and covers an area of more than 432 square kilometers. The field lies in water depths of between 120 and 170 metres. The depth of the reservoir is 2,000-3,500 metres.

A contract for developing the ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserve of the block nears 1 billion tons.

The shareholders of the project are BP (operator, 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), Itocu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent).

In December , 2016, Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR and BP-operated Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) signed an agreement on future development of the ACG field. The agreement will cover the development of the field until 2050 and will add significant resource development potential.