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â€œContract of the Centuryâ€ Participants to sanction Balakhany Layer Suite Development Project next year

11 September 2008 16:08 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vugar Mustafayev â€“ APA-Economics. Oil firms involved in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) Project in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea will start giving sanctions on Balakhany Layer Suite Development Project, said Vagif Aliyev, SOCARâ€™s head of international investments.
He added that work is under way to develop a technical plan of the project.
â€œTwo offshore platforms will be built as part of this project. The project will spend about $10 billion in investment,â€ he added.
Chirag Platform, which will be built by 2013, will allow producing 100 000 barrels of oil a day.
And, Azeri Platform that will be built by 2015 will also provide 100 000 barrels of oil a day.
As a result, Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli will produce 9 billion barrels of oil.
Under the ACG agreement between the government of Azerbaijan and a consortium of foreign companies, the consortium has the right to do exploitation up to Fasila Layer Suite. The development of deeper horizon is subject to another contract.
The Fasila Suite ranges within 100 meters deep.
Two gas-rich layers â€“ Girmekiustu (140-160 meters) and Girmekialti (140-160) underlie Fasila. The underlying layers are estimated to hold 200 billion cubic meters of gas in reserve.
ACG participating interests are: BP (operator â€“ 34.1%), Chevron (10.2%), SOCAR (10%), INPEX (10%), StatoilHydro (8.6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.8%), Devon (5.6%), ITOCHU (3.9%), Hess (2.7%).
The ACG Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), signed in September 1994, covers the 30 year development of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli contract area. The field has been developed in several phases: Chirag has been producing since 1997 as part of the Early Oil Project (EOP). This was followed by Azeri Project Phase 1 - Central Azeri production in early 2005. Successive Phase 2 included West Azeri, which started production in January 2006, and East Azeri, which started production in October 2006. The ACG Phase 3 - Deepwater Gunashli started up a few months ago.