Production at Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli hits 167m barrels

By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

The total production at Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) block of fields amounted to 167 million barrels in 2021, BP Azerbaijan has said.

Last year, the total production on the block of fields amounted to 458,000 barrels per day. Of this, the Chirag field accounted for 27,000 b/d, Central Azeri for 109,000 b/d, West Azeri for 116,000 b/d, East Azeri for 76,000 b/d, Deepwater Gunashli for 86,000 b/d and West Chirag for 44,000 b/d.

On September 18, 2021, the ACG field reached 4 billion barrels of total oil production since the start of its operations.

At the end of 2021, 135 wells were producing oil, while 29 wells were used for water and eight for gas injection. In addition, ACG completed 10 oil producer and four water injector wells.

As part of the ACG annual work programme, two planned maintenance programmes (turnaround - TAR) were successfully implemented on the ACG platforms in 2021 – on West Azeri in the second quarter and on Chirag in the third quarter.

During the reported period, ACG delivered 3 billion cubic meters, or an average of 9 million cubic meters per day of ACG-associated gas to SOCAR, primarily at the Sangachal Terminal, and to SOCAR’s Oil Rocks facility. The remaining associated gas produced was re-injected for reservoir pressure maintenance.

The company spent about $533 million in operating expenditure and about $1.6 billion in capital expenditure on the ACG activities.

Moreover, in 2021, the Shah Deniz field produced around 23 billion cubic meters of gas and more than 4 million tonnes of condensate.

The existing Shah Deniz facilities’ production capacity is currently about 72 million standard cubic meters of gas per day.

It was noted that during the reported period, the Shah Deniz field continued to provide deliveries of gas to markets in Azerbaijan (to Azerkontrakt), Georgia (to GOGC), Turkey (to BOTAS), and to BTC Company in multiple locations. 

More than $2 billion were spent in operating expenditure and around $680 million in capital expenditure, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz 2 project.

The East South flank started up safely in the second quarter of 2021 and later in the year the flank reached its full production rates. As a result, in July 2021, the daily production rates of the Shah Deniz Bravo platform reached the Shah Deniz Alpha rates for the first time.

The Shah Deniz 2 project also started up production from the 5th well on the North flank. This marked the first in-fill well tie-in to a live subsea operating manifold in the Caspian.

It should be noted that last year, Shah Deniz celebrates its 25th anniversary since the signing of the Shah Deniz Production Sharing Agreement (PSA).

BP opened its first office in Baku in June 1992 and has since then contributed to Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector through operating projects such as Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), Shah Deniz, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP).

The contract for the development of the ACG oil fields was signed on September 20, 1994, and entered force in December. The contract for the development of the ACG block was extended to 2050 in September 2017.

The shareholders in the ACG project are BP (operator, 30.37 percent), SOCAR (25 percent), MOL (9.57 percent), INPEX (9.31 percent), Equinor (7.27 percent), ExxonMobil (6.79 percent), TPAO (5.73 percent), ITOCHU (3.65 percent), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.31 percent).

The contract on the development of the Shah Deniz gas field was signed in 1996. Shareholders of Shah Deniz project are: BP (operator, 28.8 percent), TPAO (19 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), PETRONAS (15.5 percent), LUKOIL (10 percent) and NICO (10 percent).