BP: Half of recoverable reserves at Azerbaijan's ACG extracted

Approximately half of the recoverable reserves at the Azeri–Chirag–Gunashli (ACG) block of fields, located in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, have been extracted to date, Afgan Huseynov, BP's development manager for the ACG field, said at the SPE Caspian Technical Conference in Baku, Report informs.

Huseynov noted that one of the main goals of the BP partnership is to prevent production decline at the field:

"To reverse the decline trend, I would like to highlight several investments. The largest seismic investment we have carried out in the Caspian basin is an example. This five-year program, launched two years ago, is designed to better understand the reservoirs, map static properties, and especially assess the dynamic performance of secondary reservoirs. ACG still has great potential, and we have reached half of the recoverable reserves. There is still much to gain from this field."

The official stressed that globally, with few exceptions, most of the value in the oil industry comes from base production: "At ACG, 95% of the value is linked to base production. Therefore, ensuring sufficient support through injection capacity in production wells is extremely important."

He added that drilling wells in the Caspian is a challenging process:

"Horizontal drilling has been one of the most significant advances we have achieved in this area. Our calculations show that, in order to maintain stable production in depleting reservoirs and declining field conditions, we need access to 30% more reservoirs each year. Imagine that platforms are limited, the number of wells you can reach is limited, but you need access to more reservoirs. In this regard, horizontal and multilateral wells have played a decisive role in meeting production targets."

ACG is Azerbaijan's largest oilfield block. The first production-sharing agreement for its development was signed on September 20, 1994. A new agreement on joint operation and production sharing was signed on September 14, 2017, extending development until the end of 2049.

The current shares in ACG are: BP (30.37%), SOCAR (31.65%), MOL Group (9.57%), INPEX (9.31%), ExxonMobil (6.79%), TPAO (5.73%), ITOCHU (3.65%), and ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.925%).