Italy's ENI interested in development of Azerbaijan's offshore fields

Azerbaijani Industry and Energy Minister Natig Aliyev and Italy's ENI President Paolo Scaroni discussed possibility of the company's participation in a project to develop Azerbaijan's prospective offshore fields Dan Ulduzu and Ashrafi on Tuesday in Baku, Ministry Spokesman Azer Mansimli said.

Mansimli said the sides also discussed the project on transporting Turkmen compressed gas across the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijan to Europe proposed by ENI. They discussed various projects of transportation of Caspian gas in the framework of the Southern Energy Corridor.  

Earlier, foreign companies have carried out work on prospective offshore fields Dan Ulduzu and Ashrafi. However, the contract was closed due to discovery of commercially unattractive volume of hydrocarbons. The contract on development of offshore Ashrafi-Dan Ulduzu bloc of fields was signed on Dec. 14, 1996. Ashrafi-Dan Ulduzu participating interests were BP - 30%, Unocal - 25.5%, Itochu - 20%, Delta Hess - 4.5% and SOCAR - 20%.

Previously, ENI proposed SOCAR to participate in the project on transportation of 8.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan. The project envisages the transportation of compressed gas across the Caspian Sea by ships. The parties in the joint working group will examine the whole range of issues within the project, in particular, technical, legal and commercial issues.


/Trend/