Oil production in Azerbaijan down 1.6% in 2016, gas down 1.2%

Oil production in Azerbaijan in 2016 amounted to more than 41 million tonnes, gas production was 29.4 billion cubic meters ( bcm), State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) Vice President Khoshbakht Yusifzade said during an interview with the Respublika official newspaper.


In 2015 oil production in the country, including gas condensate, amounted to 41.689 million tonnes, gas - 29.743 bcm. So, last year the figures fell by about 1.6% and 1.2%, respectively.


Yusifzade said that SOCAR produced 7.5 million tonnes of oil and 6.3 bcm of gas in 2016.


Oil production by the Azerbaijan International Operating Company's consortium, which is developing the Azeri-Chirag-Gyuneshli (ACG) block of fields, for last year amounted to 33.5 million tonnes, gas production amounted to 23.1 bcm.


The vice president of SOCAR said that the total volume of oil from the ACG block since the start of development as at January 1, 2017 reached 416.5 million tonnes. In particular, 231.8 million tonnes accounted for the share of Azerbaijan's profitable oil, of which 19.3 million tonnes was produced in 2016.


"More than 2.6 million tonnes of oil and 1 bcm of associated gas a month is produced from the field," Yusifzade said.


In total during this period, 435.4 million tonnes of Azerbaijani oil were exported to global markets, including 321.7 million tonnes via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.


The total volume of gas produced at the Shah Deniz field amounted to 78.4 bcm, condensate - 19.6 million tonnes. On average, 29.5 million cubic meters of gas and 6,500 tonnes of condensate were produced on a daily basis from eight wells, Yusifzade said.


The total amount of gas exports via the South Caucasus trunk pipeline to Georgia amounted to 5.9 bcm, to Turkey - 43.8 bcm, he said. Average daily gas supplies to Georgia along this pipeline currently is 4 mcm, to Turkey - 18.5 mcm.


Oil production from the Chirag field has been carried out since 1997, from the central and western parts of the Azeri field - since 2005, from the eastern part of Azeri - since 2006, from the western part of the Chirag field - 2014.

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