Baku News

November 14, 2007 – LONDON - BP PLC made "a potentially significant" gas discovery in the Caspian Sea south of Azerbaijan, the British energy company said today. Test results show sufficient gas at the Shah Deniz field for a second stage of development, BP said in a statement. BP is leading the development of the field, and said it appears the second phase "will likely be similar or larger than stage 1" at 8.6 billion cubic meters a year. The reservoir lies beneath an existing source at the Shah Deniz field, which lies in water depths between 164 feet and 1,968 feet, some 44 miles south east of Baku. Azerbaijan's state oil company announced in September that natural gas reserves at the Shah Deniz field are believed to be nearly twice as large as previously estimated. Drilling at the field showed that total gas reserves could be as much as 1.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 240 million tons of gas condensate, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan said then. That was nearly double the recent reserve estimate by BP — about 640 billion cubic meters. BP shares gained 2.7 percent to 598.5 pence ($12.36) in trading Wednesday in London. The consortium it leads developing Shah Deniz also includes Norway's Statoil ASA, France's Total SA and Russia's OAO Lukoil.