Expansion eyed: BP seeks to expand Caspian oil project
BP eyes expansion of Caspian oil project
UK supermajor BP and its partners plan to expand a crude production project in Azerbaijan’s section of the Caspian Sea from 2013.
The partners are developing the Chirag oil project, which will add more than 300 million barrels of crude to the potential output from the existing Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli fields, London- based BP said in report posted on its Web site on 17 February.
The project will add about 100,000 barrels of oil per day to ACG production, the company said.
ACG fields are currently pumping about 700,000 bpd, Andy Inglis, chief executive officer of exploration and production at BP, said 3 February.
The company has been restoring extraction at the Azeri fields after a gas leak halted some output in September, said a Bloomberg report.
Crude from the ACG fields is exported via the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline to the Mediterranean or the Baku-Supsa link to the Black Sea.
Azerbaijan also exports oil through the Baku- Novorossiysk line to Russia and by rail to Georgia.
The partners plan to sanction the Chirag project late in the year, BP said in its in-house magazine BP Magazine.
An oil platform will be installed between Chirag-1 and Deep Water Gunashli platforms as part of the development.