In his article published in local state newspapers, Abdullayev said that 407 million tons of oil and 124.3 billion cubic meters of associated gas have been produced at Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block of oil and gas fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea since 1997, Trend reports.

He pointed out that it is planned to produce additional 5 billion barrels of oil until the end of the validity period of the production sharing agreement.

"As part of the full-scale project work, additional 4 billion barrels of oil can be produced with help of new investments and by increasing the oil recovery factor,” said SOCAR’s president.

"The ACG project has been bringing profit for 17 years. The project participants get benefits from the profitable oil. The volume of profitable oil that accounts for Azerbaijan increases from year to year. We plan to bring this volume to 60 percent in 2016,” said Abdullayev.

He pointed out that the gas produced as part of the project is received by SOCAR free of charge. The company’s president believes that this is an important contribution to the country’s economic development.

"On average, 7.2 million cubic meters of associated gas per day was received from ACG block of fields in January-June 2016. In total, 1.31 billion cubic meters of gas was produced during that period,” he added.

Currently, the total proven reserve in Azerbaijan is 2 billion tons of oil and 2.6 trillion cubic meters of gas. This is while the projected reserve nears 5.4 trillion cubic meters of gas and 4.5 billion tons of oil.

The contract for development of ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserve of the block nears 1 billion tons.

The shareholders of the project are: BP (operator in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) - 35.78 percent, Chevron - 11.27 percent, Inpex - 10.96 percent, AzACG - 11.65 percent, Statoil - 8.56 percent, Exxon - 8 percent, TPAO - 6.75 percent, Itocu - 4.3 percent and ONGC - 2.72 percent.