BP AZERBAIJAN LEADERSHIP HOLDS MEDIA BRIEFING ON 2007 FIRST QUARTER RESULTS
President of BP Azerbaijan Bill Schrader and other members of the company`s leadership team held a media briefing in Baku Tuesday on results for the first quarter of 2007.
Speaking on the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil project (ACG), the company`s leadership said during the first quarter of the year the ACG spent $79 million in operating expenditure and $614 million capital expenditures. For the full year, the company plans to spend $396 million in operating expenditure and $2,579 million in capital expenditure. According to BP Azerbaijan officials, during the first three months of the year, the company produced a total of 61 million barrels from the Chirag, Central Azeri, West Azeri and East Azeri platforms, with the current production being over 700,000 barrels per day. The company’s leadership also noted Chirag has 21 wells in operation, whilst Central Azeri (CA) 14 wells, West Azeri (WA) 6 wells and East Azeri (EA) 8 pre-drilled wells. According to the BP Azerbaijan management, the company currently employs 7,900 people, of which 75% are Azerbaijan nationals. On the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, the company’s leadership said in early April the pipeline celebrated the lifting of the 100 millionth barrel of oil from the Ceyhan Terminal in Turkey, and since last June, 131 million barrels have been exported via the BTC. The BP Azerbaijan officials said during the first quarter of this year the BTC spent $16 million in capital expenditure and the total capital expenditure in 2007 will be 152 million. The pipeline, according to the company`s management, has already exceeded an export rate of 870,000 barrels of oil per day and is on target to achieve one million barrels per day in late 2008. On the Shah Deniz gas condensate development project, the BP Azerbaijan leadership team said during the first quarter of 2007, the project spent $29 million of the planned $183 million operating expenditure, and $102 million of the planned $334 million capital expenditure. The company`s officials noted Shah Deniz is currently producing 180 million cubic feet of gas, plus about 15,000 barrels of condensate per day from two wells, which makes around 46,000 barrels of equivalent per day.
According to the BP Azerbaijan management team, the company plans to produce an average of around 65,000 barrels per day (oil equivalent) from Shah Deniz. On the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) gas export project, the BP Azerbaijan leadership noted during the first three months of 2007 the company spent $12 million of the planned $41 million for capital expenditure activities in 2007.
The company`s management said the SCP has been operational since 2006, delivering gas from Shah Deniz to Azerbaijan and Georgia, and was tied-in with the Turkish pipeline system at the Georgian-Turkish border in December.
The media briefing ended with a question-answer session.
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