Baku News

02/05/2006 00:31 AssA-Irada - Baku - Azerbaijan has been paying special attention to exploration operations in the Caspian Sea of late and 48 offshore exploration wells have been drilled over last several years alone, First Vice President of SOCAR Khoshbakht Yusifzada has said Yusifzada said that as a result of this exploration, confirmed reserves of the fields being jointly developed with foreign companies have increased from 500 to 900 million tons. According to the first vice president, this is tantamount to the discovery of eight major fields. He noted that foreign companies operating in Azerbaijan had invested $1 billion in exploration operations over the past several years. Yusifzada pledged that exploration operations would be continued in the Caspian in 2006. He indicated that SOCAR had plans to start the development of several prospects on its own this year, adding that the company intended to independently engage in exploration operations on Babek, Ashrafi and Garadagh fields. "In order to improve our financial performance, we have to be able to do some of the work ourselves. We would like to install a SOCAR platform either on Garadagh or Ashrafi," he said. When asked by journalists, Yusifzada said the existing reserves would last Azerbaijan for 50-60 years, but further exploration could double the figure. The SOCAR official said the company intended to increase gas production this year. He said that by conducting some upgrade work on Gunashli, which is part of the country's major Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) offshore fields, the company wants to produce an additional 1-1.5 billion cubic meters of gas.