According to BP-Azerbaijan, this followed the successful sail away of the topsides on 12 September from the AMEC-TEKFEN-AZFEN (ATA) fabrication yard in Bibi-Heybat where they were built as part of the Chirag Oil Project (COP). It is expected that offshore hook-up and commissioning of the unit will be complete by the end of the year.
A number of new state of the art technology and equipment have been utilised in this topsides unit for the first time in the Caspian Sea to ensure high standards in safe and reliable operations for many years.
The construction of the topsides started in July 2010 and was completed in July 2013 followed by about 2 months of the remaining onshore commissioning activities. The entire construction work was performed with full commitment to the highest safety standards without a single day off from work case throughout around 20 million man-hours achieved.
With its completed weight of 19,500 tonnes the West Chirag topsides is the heaviest structure ever installed in the Caspian and it was fully constructed in the country using local infrastructure at the ATA fabrication yard which was upgraded for this scale of activities. Maximization of local content remained a major priority throughout the 3-year construction activities - about 4000 people including sub-contractors and specialist vendors were involved in the construction works with up to 90% of the workforce being Azerbaijani nationals.
ACG participating interests are: BP (operator – 35.8%), Chevron (11.3%), SOCAR (11.6%), INPEX (11%), Statoil (8.6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.8%), ITOCHU (4.3%), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.7%).
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