A production sharing agreement for the Azeri, Chirag and Gunashli (ACG) structures in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian was signed in September 1994.
The Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field in the Caspian is being developed with seven platforms. StatoilHydro participates in the ACG field as a partner in the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC).
Operator BP currently puts total recoverable reserves in ACG over the production sharing period – 1994-2024 – at 5.4 billion barrels of oil.
Plans call for the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian to be fully developed by 2008-09, with seven platforms.
Average daily output from this development is due to exceed one million barrels in 2009.
Early oil production began in November 1997 from the upgraded Chirag I platform. This represented the first of several planned phases in a full field development of Azeri, Chirag and the deepwater section of Gunashli.
Production from Central Azeri, which comprises phase I of the ACG development, began on 13 February 2005.
This phase comprises two platforms, one for production and the other for compression and water injection. Output from Central Azeri totalled 93,000 barrels per day in 2005. Central Azeri is expected to produce an average of 230,000 barrels of oil per day in 2006. Total capacity for the production platform is 420,000 barrels per day.
A second development phase, covering the eastern and western areas of the field, involves one platform on each of these sections.
West Azeri came on stream in December 2005. East Azeri started production in October 2006.
The third and final stage covers the deepwater section of the Gunashli field. Production began in April 2008.
Oil transportCrude oil from the Chirag I early phase, Central Azeri and West Azeri comes ashore by pipeline to the Sangachal terminal south of the Azerbaijan capital, Baku.
Most of this crude is currently carried in the 850-kilometre western export pipeline, which has a daily capacity of 130,000 barrels, to the Georgian port of Supsa on the Black Sea.
Some of the oil from Sangachal is also exported via a northern pipeline to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
Tankers are used to ship the crude from Supsa and Novorossiysk through the Bosporous and the Mediterranean to world markets.
The new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline came on stream in tMay 2005, running from the Sangachal terminal via Georgia to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.
Oil from Central Azeri travels through this system, with Chirag early production using the pipeline to Supsa.
