AIOC starts pumping oil early from East Azeri field

"Thanks to successful planning, construction and other operations in the Caspian Sea we were able to produce first oil from East Azeri four months ahead of schedule," David Woodward, the head of BP in Azerbaijan, said in a statement.

The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) said production began at the first of eight wells in water depths of 150 metres (492 ft), and first oil would reach the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline pump station at the Sangachal terminal near Baku in two weeks.

East Azeri is due to produce 260,000 barrels per day at its peak, while overall Azeri field production is forecast at over 800,000 bpd by mid-2007.

The consortium began pumping oil from Central Azeri in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea in February of 2005 and from Western Azeri in January this year.

It has been pumping from the neighbouring Chirag field since November 1997 and will start producing oil at Guneshli in 2008.

The Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) group of fields has reserves of 5.6 billion barrels of oil, which are due to be extracted by 2025.

ACG is set to become the main source of crude for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which will pump more than 1.0 million bpd from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean coast once it reaches plateau output in 2009. Reuters