NGW Magazine: Baku wants rigs for its gas
The sailaway of the first jacket for Shah Deniz 2 is a practical step towards exports but Azerbaijan will find it an uphill struggle rallying the troops for more action, given the difficulty it faces with securing rigs.
On September 1, the first jacket for the Shah Deniz 2 gas and condensate project in the Caspian was towed off to its resting-place. It is the first link in the multi-billion dollar 16bn m³/yr Southern Gas Corridor (SGC).
The event is a milestone in the country’s history as it joins the ranks of gas exporters to Europe, but while there is no doubt about the availability of the gas, producing it faces a number of hurdles, which have since 2014 been all the higher because of the low oil price. There are also more practical issues, such as the availability of the necessary hardware.
The opportunities that Azerbaijan’s offshore gas resources create for an expansion of the country’s gas exports were the main topics of discussion between Mohammed Hossein Adeli, the former Iranian diplomat who is now secretary-general of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev and his energy minister Natiq Aliev.
But a conference also in Baku at the end of August learned that the country faces a logistical problem: there is a shortage of rigs to develop the reserves under the landlocked sea – or lake, depending on the legal advice. Making the rigs is slow, and bringing them there will be costly.
John Roberts