Industry and Energy

Industry and Energy

BP Azerbaijan to sanction new Chirag Oil Project in early 2010

17 September 2009 09:42 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev â€“ APA-Economics. With five existing offshore production platforms - Chirag, Central Azeri, East Azeri and West Azeri and Deepwater Gunashli (DWG) are producing hydrocarbons successfully, BP Azerbaijan plans to add another promising member of the family so as to increase oil production and recovery by drilling more oil wells into the Fasila and Balakhany reservoirs.

The company said it is due to sanction new Chirag Oil Project (COP) in the first quarter of 2010 as part of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli fields development project.

It is reckoned that the new Chirag Oil Project (COP) will add more than 300 million barrels of crude oil to the pipeline during the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) period. The COP will add about 100mbopd to ACG production when it starts up in 2013.

The COP will consist of a new 48-slot drilling and processing platform to be installed between Chirag-1 and DWG platforms, designated West Chirag production, drilling and quarters (WC-PDQ) platform. The platform will be located in approximately 170m of water depth.

The new platform design will be based on the previous successful platforms at ACG. It will be constructed based on the model of East Azeri platform. New intra-field pipelines will be installed offshore to tie the WC-PDQ platform into the existing ACG infrastructure. No new offshore export pipelines or Sangachal Terminal equipment will be installed as part of this project.

The ACG oilfield includes two main horizons: Fasila and Balakhany.
The production so far has been almost entirely from the Fasila reservoir. When the ACG PSA was signed in 1994, it was agreed that the consortium will start development of the Fasila horizon first and move to Balakhany later

The COP will follow the successful approach to technology standardisation followed by the Azeri and DWG project developments.