Page 17 - FSUOGM Week 19 2020

FSUOGM PROJECTS & COMPANIES FSUOGM
SOCAR spuds new well at Caspian’s Umid field
AZERBAIJAN
SOCAR is targeting production growth this year.
AZERBAIJAN’S SOCAR has reported sinking a new well at the Umid gas and condensate field in the Caspian Sea, as it targets a steep rise in the project’s production rate.
The new well will be drilled to a depth of 6,270 metres and is expected to flow 1.5-2.0mn cubic metres of gas per day at full capacity, raising the field’s overall output to 4.5-5.0 mcm per day.
Two more wells will also be added, and SOCAR has modernised the Umid-1 platform to handle up to 6.6 mcm per day of gas. At a later stage it plans to install a second platform at the site, Umid-2, and undertake exploration and drilling work at the nearby Babek structure. It is also constructing a new onshore terminal that will receive the project’s gas via pipeline.
Umid and Babek represent two of SOCAR’s main greenfield projects. They are situated about 75 km south-east of Baku, in waters 170 metres deep.
SOCAR partnered with London-based Nobel Upstream to explore the block in 2008, resulting in Umid’s discovery two years later. At the time the Azeri firm described the field as Azerbaijan’s
biggest find since the BP-operated Shah Deniz field.
Trial production was started in 2012 and reached 850 mcm of gas and 140,000 tonnes of condensate last year, a source at SOCAR told NewsBase. The plan is to raise this to 960 mcm and 145,000 tonnes in 2020, the source said.
The Umid-Babek block’s development has taken longer than SOCAR initially anticipated, partly because of spending cuts made after the 2014 oil price crash and partly because of the project’s complexity. Umid’s gas is found over 6,000 metres under the seabed in high-pressure and high-temperature reservoirs.
SOCAR and Nobel finalised a risk-service agreement (RSA) for Umid-Babek in 2019 and established an 80:20 joint venture to develop the site. SOCAR has been seeking to bring an inter- national partner on board for some time, with- out success. Among those it has held talks with are Russia’s Lukoil, a seasoned Caspian operator working off Russia and Kazakhstan, and France’s Total, which is developing Azerbaijan’s offshore Absheron field. ™
Week 19 13•May•2020 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P17