The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) is pleased to announce that the topsides of the Central Azeri Compression and Water Injection Platform (C&WP) sailed away successfully on Saturday, July 2, and were safely launched offshore onto the jacket on Sunday, July 3. This follows the load out of the 14,000 tonne topsides onto the transportation barge STB-1 from the Amec-Tekfen-Azfen (ATA)) yard on the 27th of June.
The parties to the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) Production Sharing Agreement are: BP (operator - 34.1%), Unocal (10.3%), SOCAR (10%), INPEX (10.,0%), Statoil (8,6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.8%), Devon (5.6%), Itochu (3.9%), Amerada Hess (2.7%).
The C&WP Topsides is a world-class facility fully built in the ATA yard in in Bibi-Heybat near Baku. The facility has following gas and water injection and export capacities:
Gas Injection: 1 billion standard cubic feet per day utilising 5 gas injection wells
Water Injection: 1 million barrels per day utilising 12 water injection wells Gas export: 250 million standard cubic feet per day
The C&WP platform will provide water and gas injection service to Central/West and East Azeri platforms for necessary future production operations. Once connected to these platforms it will also be able to manage gas associated with oil export.
Offshore installation and hook up activities will be completed by the end of September, 2005. Offshore commissioning is planned to be complete by the end of this year.
The topsides engineering was provided by Kellogg Brown and Root, who trained a large number of Azerbaijan specialists to work with them to design this world-class offshore installation. The construction and fabrication have been undertaken by Amec-Tekfen-Azfen (ATA) alliance, who recruited and trained over 1900 Azerbaijan nationals (75% of the total workforce). The offshore transportation and installation work will be conducted by Saipem.
Bruce Luberski, BP’s Vice-President, ACG Project, says: “This is our third significant achievement in 2005 following West Azeri jacket Installation and East Azeri drilling modules delivery to Baku. Most importantly, all the three milestones were achieved with outstanding safety records and on schedule. I would like to thank every member of the team and our contractors for their hard work, safety commitment and personal dedication to the project. We are looking forward to continuing this strong safety commitment throughout the entire transportation, installation, hook up and offshore commissioning activities. “
Note to Editors:
The ACG Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) signed in September 1994, covers the 30 year development of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) contract area. It is estimated that 5.4 billion barrels of oil will be recovered during that period. The field is being developed in several phases: Chirag has been producing since 1997 as part of the Early Oil Project (EOP). This was followed by Azeri Project Phase 1 - Central Azeri production, which started on February 13, 2005. Successive phases include West Azeri and East Azeri as Azeri Project Phase 2, scheduled to come on stream in 2006 and 2007 respectively, with ACG phase 3 - Deepwater Gunashli, sanctioned on September 20, 2004, and expected to begin production in 2008.
BP Press Office, Baku: +994 12 599 45 57