Baku News

November 14, 2007 - The Associated Press - LONDON: Oil and energy company BP PLC made "a potentially significant" gas discovery in the Caspian Sea south of Azerbaijan, the company said Wednesday. Test results show sufficient gas at the Shah Deniz field for a second stage of development, BP — which is leading the development of the field — said in a statement. "Although further work is required to define this second phase it will likely be similar or larger than stage 1 — 8.6 (billion cubic meters a year)," the company said. The reservoir lies beneath an existing source at the Shah Deniz field, which lies in water depths between 50 meters and 600 meters (164 feet and 1,968 feet), some 70 kilometers (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.