SEATTLE (Oil Monster): State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has acquired a 30% stake in TotalEnergies' Absheron gas condensate field in the Azeri sector Caspian Sea, which recently came on stream.
UAE giant Adnoc on Friday confirmed the deal, and noting that on completion of the transaction, which is subject to customary regulatory approvals, it would own a 30% participating interest in Absheron, with state-owned Socar and TotalEnergies holding 35% stakes respectively.
“Entering into a strategic partnership with Socar also elevates Adnoc’s long-standing partnership with TotalEnergies, which until now had held a 50% share alongside Socar in Absheron,” stated Adnoc, without disclosing the financial details of the transaction.
Adnoc said the partnership would allow the company “to build a major footprint in a region with prolific natural resources and significant growth potential, facilitating a route into attractive international growth markets for gas in Europe and Central Asia".
“As the world transitions to a low-carbon energy system, natural gas will play a crucial role as a key transition fuel, with this investment further cementing Adnoc’s leading position as a reliable supplier of lower-carbon energy,” the company said.
Musabbeh Al Kaabi, executive director of Adnoc’s low-carbon solutions and international growth business, said that with “global gas demand expected to steadily increase over the coming decades, Adnoc will continue to responsibly meet the world’s energy needs by developing and producing natural gas from world-class assets such as Absheron".
In a separate statement issued on Friday, the French operator said that “TotalEnergies and its partner Socar have signed an agreement to sell a 15% participating interest each in the Absheron gas field to Adnoc".
Nicolas Terraz, president of exploration & production at TotalEnergies, stated that the company welcomes Adnoc as “one of its strategic partners, into the Absheron gas field, where production of the first phase started in early July, and which offers a significant further development potential to meet the growing gas demand".
TotalEnergies in July said that along with partner state-owned Socar, it had brought on stream the “first phase of development of the Absheron gas and condensate field in the Caspian Sea, around 100 kilometres southeast of Baku”.
“The development of the Absheron field provides an additional gas supply to meet growing demand, at a competitive technical cost and low greenhouse gas emissions intensity, in line with TotalEnergies’ strategy,” the French company stated.
TotalEnergies added that the project’s first phase “connects a subsea production well to a new gas processing platform, itself linked to Socar’s existing facilities”.
The first phase has production capacity of 4 million cubic metres per day of gas and 12,000 barrels per day of condensate, with the gas to be sold to Azerbaijan’s domestic market.
Absheron’s progress is being closely watched in Europe, where officials hope to double imports of Azerbaijan gas over the next several years to compensate for lost Russian pipeline gas deliveries.
According to a partner with Baku-based energy consultancy Caspian Barrel, Ilham Shaban, the first 50 billion cubic metres of Absheron’s gas output are reserved for the domestic market to help free up volumes from other Azeri projects for export.
Once the domestic supply commitment is fulfilled, gas from Absheron could be exported to help meet Baku’s promises of higher gas deliveries to Europe, Shaban said.
According to TotalEnergies, the early production system scheme for Absheron is based on the tie-back of one subsea well — ABD001 — to a shallow-water receiving platform near Azeri national oil company Socar’s operated Oil Rocks field, 34 kilometres to the north.
Absheron is believed to contain recoverable gas reserves of about 350 Bcm and more than 800 million barrels of condensate.
Authorities in Baku hope the start-up of early gas production at Absheron will revive interest from major international oil and gas investors that has waned since BP exited another Caspian exploration project in Azerbaijan, known as the Shallow Water Absheron Peninsula block.
Courtesy: www.businesspost.ng
