ACG to Cut Output Under Opec+ Deal: Press

BP and its partners have agreed to cut oil output at Azerbaijan's flagship Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) project in the Caspian Sea by 80,000 b/d next month, sources told Reuters on April 23, under a deal by Opec+ producers to take 9.7mn b/d of global supply offline.

Consortiums involved in major production-sharing agreements in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have previously been excluded from government-imposed output cuts. But like other Opec+ members, Azerbaijan has committed to reducing national extraction by 23% in May, meaning its output should fall to 554,000 b/d in May from a 718,000 b/d baseline level in October 2018. It cannot implement this unprecedented cut without involving ACG, by far its largest producer having delivered 535,000 b/d of oil last year.

NGW reported last week that Azerbaijan's national oil company Socar had held negotiations with 14 of its upstream partners on how the Opec+ cuts would be shared. BP's partners at ACG are Socar, US major ExxonMobil, Hungary's MOL, Japan's Inpex and Itochu, Norway's Equinor, Turkish Petroleum (TPAO) and India's ONGC Videsh. MOL has only just joined the project after closing a deal on April 16 to acquire Chevron's 9.6% stake for $1.57bn.