The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) is pleased to announce that the deck, modules and drilling rig (topsides) for the West Chirag platform were safely installed offshore onto the jacket in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field on 14 September.
This followed the successful sail away of the topsides on 12 September from the AMEC-TEKFEN-AZFEN (ATA) fabrication yard in Bibi-Heybat where they were built as part of the Chirag Oil Project (COP). It is expected that offshore hook-up and commissioning of the unit will be complete by the end of the year.
The construction of the topsides started in July 2010 and was completed in July 2013 followed by about 2 months of the remaining onshore commissioning activities. The entire construction work was performed with full commitment to the highest safety standards without a single day off from work case throughout around 20 million man-hours achieved.
A number of new state of the art technology and equipment have been utilised in this topsides unit for the first time in the Caspian Sea to ensure high standards in safe and reliable operations for many years.
With its completed weight of 19,500 tonnes the West Chirag topsides is the heaviest structure ever installed in the Caspian and it was fully constructed in the country using local infrastructure at the ATA fabrication yard which was upgraded for this scale of activities.
Maximization of local content remained a major priority throughout the 3-year construction activities - about 4000 people including sub-contractors and specialist vendors were involved in the construction works with up to 90% of the workforce being Azerbaijani nationals.
Notes to Editors
The Chirag Oil Project (COP) is a $6 billion further development plan for ACG. Some $4 billion of the total project value was planned for the construction of facilities and the pre-drill programme, and the balance of the sum will be spent on the platform development well drilling during the production period. This major investment will contribute to optimizing recovery from the ACG field.
For the first time in the history of Azerbaijan’s world-class construction sites, the West Chirag platform fabrication work was fully undertaken in the country using local resources.
The design oil capacity of the new installation is 183 thousand barrels per day. The design gas export rate is 229 million standard cubic feet per day but is capable of exporting as much as 285 million standard cubic feet per day. There is capacity for providing up to 80 million standard cubic feet per day of gas lift.
ACG participating interests are: BP (operator – 35.8%), SOCAR (11.6%), Chevron (11.3%), INPEX (11%), Statoil (8.6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.8%), ITOCHU (4.3%), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.7%).
Tamam Bayatly, BP Baku Press office, telephone: 994 (0) 12 437 7573