BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited is the operator on behalf of the Contractor Parties to the ACG Production Sharing Agreement.
In the first half of 2023, bp and its co-venturers spent about $232 million in operating expenditure and $746 million in capital expenditure on ACG activities.
During the first half of the year, the Azeri Central East (ACE) platform jacket sailed away from the Heydar Aliyev Baku Deepwater Jackets Factory, where it was built, to its permanent location at the ACG field and was installed in a water depth of 137 metres. The jacket was fully commissioned and tested onshore prior to its sail away on 16 March.
The ACE platform topsides unit and drilling facilities construction and commissioning activities continued at the fabrication yard in Bibi-Heybat.
On 4 April, the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev visited the topsides fabrication yard and toured the almost completed topsides unit before it had sailed away to its permanent location.
Most of the key commissioning activities planned to be performed onshore were successfully completed during the first half of the year. These mainly included the successful completion of the rig access period, the integrated assurance test and the blowdown safety testing. For the first time the blowdown safety testing was performed onshore using nitrogen. This eliminated the need for testing the system on hydrocarbons during the offshore start-up.
Following these completions, the topsides unit was safely jacked-up and lowered onto the load-out frame for skidding onto the transportation barge.
On 30 May, the transportation barge STB-1 arrived at the Bibi-Heybat yard and preparations for load out activities commenced.
On 2 July, the topside unit was loaded out onto the STB-1 barge and is now ready to sail away to the ACG field in early August for offshore installation onto the jacket.
The subsea oil pipeline isolation tool was launched and the works to isolate the pipeline topsides were also completed in the first half of 2023. The diving support vessel completed the tie-in of the existing 30” spool, while the Citadel vessel finalized the isolation tool reversal activity.
Offshore commissioning works for the Central Azeri platform telecom modifications for ACE were also finalized in the first half of the year.
By the end of the second quarter, the ACE project had reached 89 per cent progress milestone.
Production
During the first half of 2023, ACG continued to safely and reliably deliver stable production. Total ACG production for the first half of 2023 was on average about 375,000 barrels per day (b/d) (about 68 million barrels or 9 million tonnes in total) from the Chirag (23,000 b/d), Central Azeri (98,000 b/d), West Azeri (91,000 b/d), East Azeri (61,000 b/d), Deepwater Gunashli (67,000 b/d) and West Chirag (35,000 b/d) platforms.
At the end of the second quarter, 137 oil wells were producing, while 44 were used for water and seven for gas injection.
Drilling and completion
In the first half of 2023, ACG completed three oil producer and four water injector wells.
Associated gas
During the first half of the year, ACG delivered an average of around 6 million cubic metres per day of ACG associated gas to the state of Azerbaijan (1.1 billion cubic metres in total), primarily at the Sangachal terminal but also to SOCAR’s Oil Rocks facility. The remainder of the associated gas produced was re-injected for reservoir pressure maintenance.
In the first half of 2023, oil and gas from ACG and Shah Deniz continued to flow via subsea pipelines to the Sangachal terminal.
The daily capacity of the terminal’s processing systems is currently 1.2 million barrels of crude oil and condensate, and about 81 million standard cubic metres of Shah Deniz gas, while overall processing and export capacity for gas, including ACG associated gas is around 100 million standard cubic metres per day.
During the first six months, the Sangachal terminal exported about 115 million barrels of oil and condensate. This included about 114 million barrels through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and around 1 million barrels through the Western Route Export Pipeline (WREP).
Gas is exported via the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), including the SCP expansion system and via Azerbaijan’s pipelines connecting the terminal’s gas processing facilities with Azerigas’s national grid system.
On average, 72 million standard cubic metres (about 2,542 million standard cubic feet) of Shah Deniz gas was sent from the terminal daily during the first half of 2023.
In the first half of 2023, BTC Co. spent about $59 million in operating expenditure and $18 million in capital expenditure.
Since the 1,768 km BTC pipeline became operational in June 2006 till the end of June 2023, it carried a total of over 4.1 billion barrels (more than 546 million tonnes) of crude oil loaded on 5,402 tankers and sent to world markets. The 4 billion barrels of oil export milestone was achieved on 18 January 2023.
In the first half of the year, 114 million barrels (more than 15 million tonnes) of BTC-exported crude oil was lifted at Ceyhan and loaded on 158 tankers.
The BTC pipeline currently carries mainly ACG crude oil and Shah Deniz condensate from Azerbaijan. In addition, other volumes of Caspian regional crude oil and condensate (Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) continue to be transported via BTC.
In the first half of 2023, bp and its co-venturers spent around $1,208 million in operating expenditure and around $408 million in capital expenditure on Shah Deniz activities, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz 2 project.
Production
During the first six months, the Shah Deniz field continued to provide gas to markets in Azerbaijan (to Azerkontrakt), Georgia (to GOGC), Türkiye (to BOTAS), BTC in multiple locations and to buyers in Europe.
In the first half of the year, the field produced about 13 billion standard cubic metres of gas and more than 2 million tonnes (about 18 million barrels) of condensate in total from the Shah Deniz Alpha and Shah Deniz Bravo platforms.
The existing Shah Deniz facilities’ production capacity is currently about 72.6 million standard cubic metres of gas per day or approximately 26.5 billion standard cubic metres per year.
In the second quarter of 2023, the Shah Deniz 2 project progressed on schedule towards the production start-up from the East North flank in the fourth quarter of the year.
The installation and testing activities for this start-up project continued both subsea and on the topsides modules onboard the Shah Deniz Bravo platform. The project successfully completed flooding, cleaning, gauging and hydrotesting activities for the East North production flowlines, installed all flexible monobores at the East North flank and completed tie-ins of remaining closing spools at the Shah Deniz Bravo platform location.
Drilling
During the first half of the year, the Shah Deniz Alpha platform rig was on warm stack.
For the Shah Deniz 2 project, completion activities continue using the Istiglal rig.
In total 21 wells have been drilled for Shah Deniz 2. These include five wells on the North flank, four wells on the West flank, four wells on the East South flank, five wells on the West South flank and three wells on the East North flank.
In the first half of 2023, SCPC spent around $39 million in operating expenditure and more than $3 million in capital expenditure in total.
The SCP has been operational since late 2006, transporting Shah Deniz gas to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye. The expanded section of the pipeline commenced commercial deliveries to Türkiye in June 2018 and to Europe in December 2020.
During the first half of 2023, the daily average export throughput of the SCP was 60.7 million cubic metres of gas per day.
In the first half of 2023, we drilled an appraisal well (A22z) on the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli structure, which was for acquiring data about the deep-lying gas reservoirs beneath the currently producing oil field. The well was spudded on 7 February 2023 and completed in April. The data obtained from the well is currently being studied to understand the potential of the deep gas layers.
In 2023, we also started drilling activities on an exploration well (SDX-8) in the Shah Deniz contract area. The well was spudded on 20 January and the drilling activities are progressing steadily.
In the first half of the year, we also completed the interpretation of the results of the reprocessing of the data obtained from the first exploration well - SAX01, drilled in the Shafag-Asiman offshore exploration contract area. Evaluation of the hydrocarbon resource encountered in the well and planning of the next stage of exploration activities are ongoing.
At the end of the second quarter of 2023, the number of bp’s Azerbaijani national employees was 2,349 including fixed-term employees.
Since mid-2018, 90% of bp Azerbaijan’s professional staff has been nationals. Non-professional staff of bp in Azerbaijan is 100% nationalized.
bp will continue its efforts to optimize its learning and development programmes and will actively participate in public and private sector initiatives contributing to the development of the local talent market.
The success of projects in the Caspian region depends, in part, on the operators’ ability to create tangible benefits from these projects for the people of the region. To achieve this, bp and its co-venturers continue to implement major social investment projects, which include educational programmes, building skills and capabilities in local communities, improving access to social infrastructure in communities, supporting local enterprises through provision of access to finance and training, support for cultural legacy and sport, as well as technical assistance to public institutions.
In the first half of 2023, bp and its co-venturers in the bp-operated joint ventures spent more than $1 million in Azerbaijan on social investment projects. During the first half, this included 13 educational projects, four programmes in support of local capacity-building and enterprise development and one environmental initiative.
In addition, in the first half, bp alone spent around $0.3 million on various social and sponsorship projects in Azerbaijan. During the first six months, these projects included nine educational initiatives, one programme in support of local capacity-building and enterprise development, one environmental initiative and one project aimed at promoting the country’s cultural heritage and sport. Also, during this period, bp sponsored nine conferences and workshops on various themes.
For more information about bp and its co-venturers’ social investment projects please visit the bp Azerbaijan website at www.bp.com/azerbaijan.
Tamam Bayatly at bp’s press office in Baku.
Telephone: (+994 12) 525 58 95