BP IMPLEMENTS ALL PROJECTS IN AZERBAIJAN SUCCESSFULLY
The BP Azerbaijan Leadership Team held Wednesday a media briefing on 2007 first half results.
Bill Schrader, president of bp Azerbaijan and vise-presidents of the company for various projects gave detailed information about works done and the further plans.
It was noted that during the first half of the year Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) spent $180 million in operating expenditure and $1,337 million in capital expenditure. For the full year, it is expected to spend $396 million in operating expenditure and $2,569 million in capital expenditure. During the first six months of the year it was produced a total of 124 million barrels (around 682,000 barrels per day average) from the Chirag, Central Azeri, West Azeri and East Azeri platforms. The current total daily production is around 730,000 barrels per day. The latest forecast is to produce an average of 686,000 barrels per day (34 million tonnes pa) from the four platforms in total for the full year. Of this, 131,000 barrels per day is expected from Chirag, 243,000 barrels per day from Central Azeri, 180,000 barrels per day from West Azeri and 132,000 barrels per day from East Azeri. Chirag has 19 wells in operation (13 oil producers and six water injectors) and is now producing around 130,000 barrels per day. From the start of production in November 1997 to the end of the second quarter 2007, Chirag had produced over 407 million barrels (over 55 million tonnes) of oil.
Central Azeri (CA) has 15 wells (12 oil producers and three gas injectors). CA is currently producing around 265,000 barrels per day. From the start of production in February 2005 to the end of the second quarter 2007, CA had produced over 171 million barrels (over 23 million tonnes).
West Azeri (WA) has 9 wells all of which 8 are oil producers. WA is currently producing around 210,000 barrels per day. From the start of production in early January 2006 to the end of the second quarter 2007, WA had produced over 65 million barrels (over 8.8 million tonnes) of oil.
East Azeri (EA) is currently producing around 124,000 barrels per day from 7 producing wells. From the start of production in October 2006 to the end of the second quarter 2007, EA had produced over 27 million barrels (over 3.6 million tonnes) of oil.
Since the beginning of this year, supply of associated gas from the CA, WA and EA platforms has continued via the 28” gas subsea pipeline into the Sangachal Terminal and into Azerigas’s national grid system for domestic use. Some of the associated gas produced from the Chirag platform has continued to flow to the SOCAR compression station at Oil Rocks via the existing 16” subsea gas pipeline. The rest of the associated gas from the ACG platforms has continued to flow via in-field subsea gas pipelines to the Compression and Water Injection Platform (C&WP) for re-injection to maintain pressure in the reservoir.
In 2007 it was planned to deliver 1.4 billion cubic meters of ACG associated gas to SOCAR. However, as agreed by AIOC and SOCAR early this year it has been delivering up to 8.0 million standard cubic metres of gas per day to SOCAR since January 1st 2007.
During the first half of 2007 oil from ACG continued to flow via one 24” and two 30” subsea pipelines to the Sangachal terminal. The terminal’s total oil processing capacity will be raised to over one million barrels of oil per day once the ongoing ACG Phase 3 facilities’ ongoing commissioning is complete at the terminal later this year.
In April the facility’s operations reached a significant milestone: 1300 days without a day away from work case. The terminal’s performance over the past three years has been outstanding. Commissioning, start-up and integration were successfully completed, including the Phase 1 and Phase 2 processing facilities, BTC main pump station, SCP facilities, Shah Deniz plant, as well as integrating SOCAR’s and third party pipelines into the terminal’s operations. In July Sangachal achieved its highest daily export rate to date when some 905,000 barrels were processed and exported.
Since April 2007 oil has continued to be transported to the global markets, principally via BTC. The total volume of oil and condensate exported by the end of July via BTC is 180.1 million barrels (over 24 million tonnes).
During the first half of this year BTC spent $52 million in capital expenditure and the total capital expenditures in 2007 are expected to be $170 million.
BTC celebrated its first anniversary on July 13 with remarkable achievements. On July 7 it carried oil from the Sangachal terminal to Ceyhan at a rate of over one million barrels per day for several hours and on July 9 the 200th tanker was loaded at Ceyhan. BTC’s daily record throughput rate of 905,000 was achieved in July. The pipeline’s average daily throughput for July was about 700,000 barrels of oil per day and it is expected to achieve one million barrels per day (approximately 50 million tonnes per year) in late 2008. At its peak the Ceyhan terminal will fill 1-2 tankers per day.