Baku News

27 December 2006 - The Associated Press - Azerbaijan's state oil company has annulled a cooperation agreement with ConocoPhilips on developing the Umid-Babek oil field, a senior official said Wednesday. Vagif Aliyev, head of the foreign investment department at SOCAR, said the memorandum of understanding with ConocoPhilips, which was signed in February 2005 and was to last two years, had not allowed SOCAR to begin developing the field on its own and has been annulled. He also said that SOCAR had received expressions of interest in the field from Total, BP PLC and Lukoil but that it had not taken any final decisions on how to proceed. According to preliminary estimates, the Caspian sea field holds around 200 million to 300 million metric tons of oil reserves. That is equivalent to around 1.5-2.2 billion barrels.