Details of Azerbaijan's Gas Production in 2015

BP plc, operator of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field, announced on May 13th that gas production volume from this field was 2.6 billion cubic meters (bcm) in first quarter of 2015 (1Q15).

The figure was 2.32 bcm in 1Q14.

On the other hand, according to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic's (SOCAR) statistics, this company's gas production reached 1.67 bcm in 1Q15, while the country's total gas output stands at 7.415 bcm.

Statistics indicate that SOCAR's gas production decreased, while the output of Shah Deniz Stage 1 (SD1) rose during the mentioned period.

There are no official reports on the April events however Khoshbakht Yusifzadeh the first Vice President of SOCAR said last week that gas production level of gas from Shah Deniz reached 61 bcm at the end of April in total (since 2007). This figure until Jan.1 was 57.2 bcm.

According to the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan's statistics, the country's total gas export reached 2.426 billion cubic meters in 1Q15, about 1.2 percent more than 1Q14.

Natural Gas Europe obtained statistics from the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) on May 13th, which stated that the Fund's net revenues from Shah Deniz reached $79.5 million in 1Q15.

This figure for the same period last year was $115.6 million.

The decrease in net revenues occured mostly due to increase of expenditures in developing SD2.

BP also confirmed during its report that "in the first quarter of 2015, Shah Deniz spent approximately $0.1 billion in operating expenditure and $1.1 billion in capital expenditure, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz Stage 2 project."

SD2 is aimed to export 16 bcm per annum of gas to Turkey and EU by 2019 initially.

In total, according to Yusifzadeh, some 33 bcm of SD1 gas has been exported to Turkey from 2007 to May 1, while this figure for Georgia was 4.5 bcm.

The remained volume which stood at 23.5 bcm, has been consumed domestically.

A source in BP told Natural Gas Europe that the expenditures of SD1 surpassed $8.2 billion until 2015. The output of SD1 is above 29 mcm/d.

The cost of the second stage of Shah Deniz field’s development is also estimated at $28 billion.

The shareholders of Shah Deniz gas field are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NICO (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

 Ilham Shaban, the head of the “Caspian Barrel” Oil Research Center