Despite the efforts of BP-Azerbaijan company’s, operator of development of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) offshore fields, this year it failed to start production within the Chiraq Oil Project, which envisages production from the Western Chiraq platform, a source from SOCAR told Turan’s correspondent.

The same source said that extraction from the new production platform is scheduled for the second half of January in 2014.

SOCAR authorized the Chiraq Oil Project in March 2010. The works started in June 2010. Almost $4 billion has been spent for the platform construction. BP and the partners have invested additional $2 billion for the offshore drilling works.

It was earlier planned that production from the platform, which is located between the Chirag-1 and deep-water Guneshli platforms, will commence in quarter 3, 2013, but then it was postponed till December 2013. However, the company failed to commence production this year.

Thanks to launching of the Western Chirag, in 2015 BP plans to stabilize production on the ACG contract area. In 2015 the production will go down, because the wells on other platforms will be repaired. The gradual production on the new platform will be unable to prevent the pace of decline. However, the production will go up since next year.

ANN.Az