Socar Launches Offshore Gas Platform

Azerbaijan's state energy company Socar launched a new production platform, #6, in the offshore Bulla Deniz  gas and condensate field on May 2.

The platform, designed and built by Socar’s engineering and building arm, has four drilling slots for one appraisal and three production wells.

Each well is expected to produce around 500,000 m³/day of gas and 150 metric tons/day of condensate, Socar said. Drilling started the same day with the objective of drilling down to 6,300 m.

The building of the platform that was installed in water depth of 20 m. Bulla Deniz is a part of Socar gas output expansion program that includes also the shallow-water Guneshli and  Umid fields.

“The new Bulla Deniz platform is one of the main elements of Socar’s program to increase gas production. All wells should be completed within three years," said the company president Rovnag Abdullaev.

The company continues to drill in Umid gas and condensate field. The deviated well #4 is almost at 4,000 m with design depth of above 6,000 m, a newly-appointed vice-president for geology and geophysics, Bahram Huseynov, told NGE. He said the Umid platform produces around 1.1-1.5mn m³/day from the two wells. The third well however failed to be completed and put into production.

Socar’s gas program is backed by a manat 600mn ($398.8mn) loan facilitated by the government from state-owned International bank of Azerbaijan.

The company  received manat 200mn for its drilling program last year and will get the same amount this year, the company vice-president  Suleyman Gasymov said earlier.

However, statistics show that Socar’s gas production fell in the first quarter of this year. The company extracted 1.595bn m³, down 4.46% on Jan-Mar 2015, when it produced 1.669bn m³.

Overall gas production in Azerbaijan according to state statistic committee was around 7.56mn m³/d for three month of 2016 , which is 2% more than in the same period last year. It includes gas produced by Socar as well as associated gas from BP’s Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli and natural gas from Shah Deniz.

Marketable gas for domestic and international customers fell by 7.9% compared with last year to 4.84bn m³ as BP has enhanced associated gas reinjection into the reservoir to support its pressure.

Kama Mustafayeva

Iran has $6.1bn-worth of upstream gas projects to offer to foreigners.https://t.co/rSKL5aW94F pic.twitter.com/fMXSkv29p7

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