Statoil: "First East Azeri oil seen early, by end year"

The BP-led (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) consortium began pumping oil from Western Azeri in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian in January, four months earlier than planned.

Norway's Statoil ASA (STL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research), which has an 8.56 percent interest in ACG, said in a statement that the deck of the East Azeri platform was lowered into position on July 28 and that the project was going well.

"Project execution has progressed well," Statoil's ACG project manager Andrew Sanderson said in the statement.

"First oil production from East Azeri is expected towards the end of 2006, several months earlier than originally planned," Statoil said.

At its peak, East Azeri will produce 260,000 barrels of oil per day, Statoil said.

ACG is set to become the main source of crude for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will pump more than 1 million bpd from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean coast once it reaches plateau output in 2009.

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