SEATTLE (Oil Monster): bp-Azerbaijan presented on Tuesday a new energy project that will boost the efficiency of Azerbaijan’s largest Shah Deniz natural gas field in the Caspian Sea.
The Shah Deniz Compression (SDC) project follows on from previous phases of development within the Shah Deniz Contract Area in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, Bagir Akhundov, Manager at bp-Azerbaijan, said.
"The Shah Deniz Contract Area, covering approximately 860 square kilometers, is located 70 kilometers southeast of Baku, at a water depth of 85 meters. The development of the contract area has so far been carried out through the Shah Deniz Stage 1 and Shah Deniz Stage 2 projects,” Azertag quoted Akhundov as saying.
At Tuesday’s event, bp-Azerbaijan introduced the draft Environmental and Socio-economic Impact Assessment (ESIA) document for the SDC project, which includes the installation of an offshore compression platform in addition to supporting infrastructure to facilitate the extraction and processing of additional gas from the Shah Deniz field.
The SDC platform will be positioned approximately 3 km from the Shah Deniz Bravo (SDB) platform and about 10 km from the Shah Deniz Alpha (SDA) platform as a central hub for gas export compression from both the SDA and SDB platforms.
The first gas production from the Shah Deniz Alpha platform is estimated for mid-2029, followed by production from the Shah Deniz Bravo platform in mid-2030. Most of the onshore construction and commissioning activities are expected to take place between 2026 and 2028.
Tamam Bayatli, Spokesperson at bp-Azerbaijan, said the final investment decision for the SDC project is scheduled for the second half of this year, before the yearend, including the project's cost, contractors, construction site, and other specifics.
"After that, the project's implementation will begin. Shah Deniz is one of the largest gas projects, not only in Azerbaijan but also for bp globally," Bayatli emphasized.
The Shah Deniz natural gas field, discovered in 1999 in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, is one of the largest gas-condensate fields globally. It is situated on the deep-water shelf of the Caspian Sea, approximately 70 km southeast of Baku, with water depths varying between 50 and 500 meters. bp names it the company’s second-biggest discovery after the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska. The field’s estimated reserves are around 1.2 trillion cubic meters (42.38 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas and 2.2 billion barrels of condensate.
bp operates the Shah Deniz field on behalf of its partners under the Shah Deniz Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) that acknowledges the project as an unincorporated joint venture (JV) operated by bp.
Shah Deniz Stage 1 commenced production in 2006, with an annual capacity of around 10 billion cubic meters of gas and approximately 50,000 barrels of condensate per day. In 2014, the existing Shah Deniz facilities underwent a de-bottlenecking process, which increased their daily production capacity from 27.3 million to 29.5 million standard cubic meters of gas. By the end of 2018, it had produced a cumulative total of 100 billion cubic meters of gas since the start of operations.
Courtesy: www.caspiannews.com
