Baku News

24 June 2008 - Today.Az - The commercial operator of Shah Deniz field development project, locating in the Caspian Azeri Sea- StatoilHydro Azerbaijan has predicted the annual extraction following launching of the second phase to be 13 bln cubic meters. Company president Christian Haussken said the extraction in the framework of the second phase will start in 2013. "Here, everything depends on our skills. Expansion of works in the future is possible". Christian Haussken announced that the decision on official launching of works will be adopted in the first quarter of 2009. As for the offer to sell Shah Deniz gas to Iran and Russia, he noted that initially the company must estimate the cost of the issue and after it the variants of sale will be discussed. It should be noted that Shah Deniz annual gas extraction currently makes 4-5 bln cubic meters. It should be reminded that volume of natural gas extraction from the Shah Deniz field in 2007 made 3.16 bln cubic meters, which is up 12.4 in comparison with the due forecast. SOCAR accounted for 1.594 bln cubic meters in the whole volume of extraction. The extraction volumes made 13.84 mln cubic meters in January, 43.07 mln cubic meters in February, 115.34 mln cubic meters in March, 109.33 mln cubic meters in April, 100.01 mln cubic meters in May, 157.16 mln cubic meters in June, 169.346 mln cubic meters in July, 156.84 mln cubic meters in August, 133.88 mln cubic meters in September, 168.5 mln cubic meters in October, 181.993 mln cubic meters in November and 244.73 mln cubic meters in December. Gas is currently being extracted in four wells. The production sharing agreement involves BP (operator-25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), LUKOIL (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%) and TRAO (9%).