Tag Archives: hydrocarbons

Azerbaijan extinguishes Caspian Sea fire

DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Azerbaijan said they had finally extinguished the fire at Platform No. 10 of the Guneshli shallow water oil rig off the coast of Baku, nearly two weeks after a storm smashed into it causing an explosion in a gas pipe.

Emergency crews also said they had received permission to search for the bodies of 26 missing oil workers from other littoral states bordering the Caspian Sea.

Three workers from the Oil Rocks platform and 23 workers from the Guneshli platform are still listed as missing.

Rescue teams have already found the bodies of seven workers killed in the fire on Dec. 4.

A final death toll of 33 would make it the worst offshore oil platform accident since the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 when 167 people were killed.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Deutag wins contracts in Azerbaijan

DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — British services company KCA Deutag won two contracts with BP worth up to $1b for operations, maintenance and engineering work in Azerbaijan. The Aberdeen-based company will work on seven oil and gas platforms operated by BP off the coast of Azerbaijan, including those exploiting the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field and the Shah Deniz gas field, two of Azerbaijan’s most important energy projects. KCA Deutag has worked in Azerbaijan for 20 years, mostly with BP. Rune Lorentzen, president of Offshore at KCA Deutag, said: “These major contract awards build on KCA Deutag’s long standing relationship with BP, and recognise our efforts to deliver both continuous improvement and value to our client.”

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

ADB funds Azerbaijani infrastructure

DEC. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it would allocate a loan of up to $2.24b to co-finance transport and energy projects in Azerbaijan in 2016- 2017. Out of this loan, the ADB said it would allocate $500m to developing the electricity network and $40m for renewable energy.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Oil field in Kazakhstan to expand in 2016

DEC. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tengizchevroil (TCO), the Chevron- led consortium operating the Tengiz oilfield in western Kazakhstan, said it increased output in the first nine months of 2015 and that it intends to push ahead with its expansion project in the first half of next year. In January-September 2015, Tengizchevroil produced 20.3m tonnes of crude oil, up 2.5% compared to the same period last year when it produced 19.8m tonnes. The so-called Future Growth Project expansion project will cost around $38b to complete and will increase output by 44%. Earlier this year, TCO delayed its expansion plans because of the low price of oil.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Iran wishes expansion in Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Iran ministry of energy said it may expand its activities in several international oil and gas fields, including Shah Deniz, Azerbaijan’s biggest gas project.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Swiss company seals deal with Azerbaijani pipeline project

DEC. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss company ABB will provide the IT control infrastructure for the TANAP pipeline which will pump 16b cubic metres of gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey and link up with the Europe-bound gas grid (Dec. 15). ABB has already worked on telecoms systems for pipelines, notably with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The company did not disclose the value of the contract. TANAP is considered vital to boosting European deliveries of Azerbaijani gas.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Construction begins on TAPI with Turkmen leadership

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a decade of talks, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India officially started construction of the TAPI pipeline that, they hope, will pump gas from Central Asia to South Asia by end-2018.

The $10b project is ambitious and fraught with risk. For a start nearly half the 1,800km route crosses Afghanistan where security has worsened over the past couple of years. This week the Asian Development Bank cut funding for a Turkmenistan-Tajikistan rail project that also crossed north Afghanistan because of security concerns.

Still, at the official opening ceremony for the TAPI pipeline in Mary, Turkmenistan, Mr Berdymukhamedov was in an upbeat mood.

“TAPI is designed to become a new effective step towards the formation of the modern architecture of global energy security, a powerful driver of economic and social stability in the Asian region,” media quoted him as saying.

By December 2018, so the plan goes, Turkmenistan should start pumping 33b cubic metres of gas a year to India.

But, as Anupama Sen, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, explained for India, TAPI has always been more of a political, rather than gas supply, project. She said India is increasing coal production to meet power demand as it is cheaper than importing gas.

“India’s negotiations over TAPI have been driven by diplomacy,” she said.

India has been trying for years to bolster its influence in Central Asia where Russia and China are so dominant. It lost out in 2013 on a stake in the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea to China. TAPI now gives it a stake in Central Asia.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR output falls

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A source at Azerbaijan’s statistic committee told Reuters that SOCAR’s low output for the first 11 months of 2015 had pushed down total oil and gas production in Azerbaijan. Azeri-Chirag- Guneshli, a BP-operated offshore oilfield, also contributed to a contraction in production of 0.5%.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Kazakhstan sells off Batumi terminal

DEC. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The oil terminal at the port of Batumi, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, will be among the companies that Kazakhstan sells off to investors during a privatisation round in 2016 and 2017. In 2008, KazTransOil, a subsidiary of state-owned Kazmunaigas, bought the Batumi oil terminal. Kazakhstan needs to sell off state-owned assets to raise cash.

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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

8 dead, 26 missing after storm hits Azerbaijani Caspian rigs

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least eight rig workers died when a storm smashed into an oil and gas platform in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea and triggered a gas explosion.

Another 23 people are still missing from Platform No. 10 of the shallow- water Guneshli field, operated by Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR. Three others are also missing from another platform in the Oil Rocks field after being swept overboard.

Rescue workers said there was little chance of finding any survivors. This means that the final death toll will probably hit 34 — the worst dis- aster in the history of Caspian Sea oil and gas production and the deadliest offshore platform accident since 167 people died in the Piper Alpha acci- dent in the North Sea in 1988.

At a press conference in Baku on Wednesday a downcast Khalig Mamedov, SOCAR vice-president , said: “Despite all the efforts, regrettably, no-one has been found. This is the biggest tragedy in SOCAR’s history.”

Media reported that most of the oil workers who died on Platform No.10 were killed in a botched attempt to abandon the platform in one of the lifeboats. Two dozen workers were successfully rescued from the plat- form, though.

As of Thursday, the blaze on Platform No. 10 was still burning.

The accident stunned people in Azerbaijan. Football matches across the country held a minute’s silence. Along the seafront in Baku people silently laid down bunches of roses. Others sobbed, looking out to sea.

The gas explosion at Platform No. 10 cut production at all 28 wells, 24 oil wells and four gas wells, of the shallow-water Guneshli field. Daily output at Guneshli was around 6,500 barrels/day of oil and 400m cubic metres of natural gas per year, Reuters reported.

Importantly for Azerbaijan’s overall oil production, BP said that output at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field complex that it manages was untouched by the accident.

Azerbaijan has been struggling to maintain oil output this year. This accident will dent both its safety record and oil production levels.

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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)