Azerbaijan produces over 600 million tons of oil from Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli, Shah Deniz fields

As of March 1, 2024, 632.7 million tons of oil (with condensate) have been produced since the commissioning of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shah Deniz fields.

During the reporting period, 587.5 million tons of oil were produced from ACG, and about 45.2 million tons of condensate from Shah Deniz, the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry told APA.

Some 630.7 million tons of that volume were exported.

Around 4.8 million tons of oil (with condensate) were produced in Azerbaijan in January-February 2024. Some 2.7 million tons of oil out of that volume were produced from ACG, 0.7 million tons (condensate) from Shah Deniz, 96,000 tons (condensate) from the Absheron field. Oil production (with condensate) through the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) reached 1.3 million tons.

“Some 3.9 million tons of oil [with condensate] were exported during the first two months of this year - 3.4 million tons through the consortium, 0.5 million tons through SOCAR,” the statement says.

Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) field located about 100km east of Baku is the largest oilfield in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian basin.

BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited is the operator on behalf of the Contractor Parties to the ACG Production Sharing Agreement.

 In 2023, bp and its co-venturers spent about $504 million in operating expenditure and $1,518 million in capital expenditure on ACG activities.

The Shah Deniz (SD) field was discovered in 1999. It is one of the world’s largest gas-condensate fields. It is located on the deep water shelf of the Caspian Sea, 70 km south-east of Baku, in water depths ranging from 50 to 500 m.

bp operates Shah Deniz on behalf of its partners in the Shah Deniz Production Sharing Agreement (PSA).

Shah Deniz is structured as an unincorporated Joint Venture (JV) partnership. bp is the operator of the Shah Deniz JV. Shah Deniz Stage 1 began operations in 2006. It has the capacity to produce around 10 billion cubic meters of gas per annum (bcma) and approximately 50,000 barrels a day of condensate.

During 2014, the existing Shah Deniz facilities were further de-bottlenecked which increased their production capacity from 27.3 million standard cubic metres to 29.5 million standard cubic metres of gas per day.