OCT. 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The head of Azerbaijan’s state energy company Socar, Rovnag Abdullayev, said there were no plans to drop BP as the operator of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev had criticised BP earlier this month for disappointing production figures from the field.
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(News report from Issue No. 110, published on Oct. 26 2012)
OCT. 18 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP transferred 10 senior engineers to Azerbaijan to help boost production at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil field it operates in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, Bloomberg news agency reported. Earlier this month, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev publicly blamed BP for declining production at ACG which came on-stream in the mid-2000s.
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(News report from Issue No. 109, published on Oct. 19 2012)
OCT. 14 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s minister for oil and gas, Kakageldy Abdullayev, told reporters at an energy forum that construction of the TAPI pipeline would begin in 2017. TAPI aims to pump gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to markets in Pakistan and India. Bangladesh has again stated it would like to join the project.
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(News report from Issue No. 109, published on Oct. 19 2012)
OCT. 10 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a government meeting broadcast on TV, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev blamed BP for declining oil production from fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea.
Such a public and unequivocal rebuke is virtually unprecedented in Azerbaijan’s recent energy history and it will sting.
BP is the dominant foreign oil company operating in Azerbaijan. Other fields are due to come on stream in the next decade but at the moment the key operations are the Shah Deniz gas field and the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) fields.
Mr Aliyev said that “grave mistakes” by BP had triggered a 12% reduction in ACG’s oil production this year and cost Azerbaijan $8b in lost oil revenues over the past three years.
BP, which owns about 36% of the field, has not given a reason for the decrease in oil production but, in response, said it was committed to both ACG and working in Azerbaijan.
The start of production at ACG had been greeted with great excitement but anticipated production of 1m barrels of oil a day quickly evaporated.
Now, the challenge is to maintain output at a far more modest 700,000 barrels of oil a day and to appease the all-powerful Mr Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 108, published on Oct. 12 2012)
OCT. 9 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP announced that gas supplies from the Shah Deniz field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to Turkey had resumed after a blast on the South Caucasus pipeline disabled it on Oct. 4. CORRECTION: In last week’s bulletin, we mistakenly named the damaged gas pipeline as the Baku-Tbilsi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. BTC is, of course, an oil pipeline. Apologies.
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(News report from Issue No. 108, published on Oct. 12 2012)
OCT. 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – An explosion disabled the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline which pumps gas from the Shah Deniz fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea to Turkey, media reported. This is the second explosion in the Turkish part of the BTC pipeline, a route critical for European gas supplies, this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 107, published on Oct. 5 2012)
OCT. 2 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – US energy company ConocoPhillips will sell its stake in the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan’s energy minister Sauat Mynbayev, told reporters. The sale gives the Kazakh government the chance to buy a larger stake in the giant oil field.
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(News report from Issue No. 107, published on Oct. 5 2012)
SEP. 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP needs to invest billions to slow declining oil production at its fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, Reuters reported, quoting diplomats and oil executives. The article suggested it may not be commercially viable to pour the extra cash into the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields.
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(News report from Issue No. 106, published on Sep. 28 2012)
SEP. 14 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan plans to produce 250b cubic metres (bcm) of gas by 2030, up from an earlier 230bcm estimate, media reported. Turkmenistan already produces 75bcm of gas. The estimate is based on tapping reserves and underlines the country’s status as a leading gas producer.
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(News report from Issue No. 105, published on Sep. 21 2012)
SEP. 14 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has started preparations to construct an oil refinery near the Caspian Sea, media reported. The refinery will be Turkmenistan’s third and have an initial capacity of 3m tonnes of crude oil a year. A feasibility study is being prepared and construction work could start in 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 105, published on Sep. 21 2012)