Statoil to complete transactions in Azeri projects in a few weeks

Statoil's transactions in the Shah Deniz and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) projects are expected to close in a few weeks, said Al Cook, BP Azerbaijan Vice President for Shah Deniz.

"We're expecting both transactions to close in the next few weeks," Cook said in an interview with Nefte Compass. 

The Norwegian company signed an agreement in December 2013 to divest a 10-percent share of its 25.5-percent holdings in the projects. The buyers are Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR (6.7 percent) and BP (3.3 percent).

After the acquisitions, the Shah Deniz co-investors and their shares in the project are as follows: BP, operator (28.8 percent), SOCAR (16.7 percent), Statoil (15.5 percent), Total (10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NICO (10 percent), and TPAO (9 percent).

Al Cook said BP is not in talks with Total over its Shah Deniz stake.

The first gas within the second stage of the development at the Shah Deniz field will be for sale in Turkey in late 2018, with the deliveries to European buyers coming around "one year later," Cook said. "All the projects are on schedule and on budget," he added.

With regard to the further expansion of phase-Shah Deniz-3, Cook said, "Since 2007, we have discovered three prospects that we would be interested in exploring in the Shah Deniz contract area."

"We have a team working on reprocessing seismic data across the entire block, looking at potential new reservoirs. It [Shah Deniz-3] is now in the appraisal period, and we would not drill a well before the end of this decade," he said.

ANN.Az