BP to begin production from deep oil reservoir at ACG block offshore Azerbaijan in Sept

BAKU. June 2 (Interfax) - BP, the operator of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) project offshore Azerbaijan, plans to begin production from a deep oil reservoir in there September this year, Gordon Birrell, BP's Executive Vice President for Production and Operations, said at a briefing.

"ACG is a field of unique scale and complexity, where free gas is located both above and below the oil-bearing formations. At the very bottom of a deeper reservoir, we discovered a thin oil rim located between gas and water layers. We drilled a well to obtain more detailed information about this oil rim. We plan to start production from this well in September this year," Birrell said.

"When we drilled the gas well [to tap the deep-lying, non-associated gas], we knew there was an oil rim between the water and the gas. We already had that information and understood that we could potentially encounter such an oil accumulation. However, we drilled a dedicated well to confirm it. The well is now being drilled into this oil rim, and production is expected to begin from there in order to assess its potential and determine the overall size of the accumulation," Birrell said.