Socar plans to start extracting gas at Babek in 2019
BAKU. June 5 (Interfax) - State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (Socar) plans to begin producing gas from the promising Babek structure in the republic's Caspian Sea waters in 2019, Socar's Vice President for economic matters Suleiman Gasymov said at the Caspian Oil & Gas conference on Wednesday.
"In accordance with Socar's package plan of measures for until 2025, the company intends to independently effect the development of the maritime deposits Umid, Ashrafi, Karabakh, and structure D-30. Development of other deposits will be done with the involvement of foreign companies. In 2019, the plan is to begin extracting hydrocarbon resources from the Babek structures, the resources of which are estimated at four hundred billion cubic meters [bcm] of gas and eighty million tonnes of condensate," Gasymov said.
In 2020, Socar intends to begin developing the Karabakh deposit and its resources of twenty billion cubic meters of gas and twenty million tonnes of condensate, and in 2023 the Ashrafi deposit with thirteen bcm of gas and seventeen million tonnes of condensate, he said.
Gasymov noted that the Trans Anadolu Pipeline (TANAP) with initial throughput capacity of sixteen bcm of gas per year is under construction. The pipeline may be expanded to twenty-three bcm annually in 2023 and to thirty-one bcm in 2026.
The promising Umid-Babek block is located in deep Caspian waters seventy-five kilometers from Baku.
Karabakh is a hundred and thirty km from Baku. It was opened in 2000 and is located in waters 250-450 meters deep.
Ashrafi was opened in 1999 and is located a hundred km from Baku, where the water is also 250-450 meters deep.
Structure D-30 is located south of the Chirag deposit.
TANAP is intended to transport Azerbaijani gas from the Georgian-Turkish border to Turkey's western border as part of Stage-2 of the Shah Deniz project. The new gas pipeline is expected to have throughput capacity of at least sixteen billion cubic meters (bcm) - ten bcm for Europe and six bcm for Turkey's western regions. The cost of the project is estimated at $10-$11 billion. Turkish companies BOTAS and TPAO own 20% of the TANAP project, and Socar has 80%. Socar intends to keep 51% of the project for itself and has offered the remaining 29% to BP (12%), Statoil (12%) and Total (5%).
