First Shah Deniz 2 Jacket Leaves Baku Shipyard

The first jacket for one of the BP-operated Shah Deniz Stage 2 platforms sailed away from the Heidar Aliev Baku Deepwater Jackets Factory (BDJF) for offshore installation September 1. In attendance was the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, whose country is the starting-point of one of the world's most complex integrated gas projects.

The transportation, launch, positioning and pile installation activities of the production and risers platform jacket structure are expected to take around 40 days to complete.

The platform jacket, built by the BOS Shelf, Star Gulf and Saipem consortium, was fully constructed in Azerbaijan at the BDJF, using local construction infrastructure and facilities. Over 4,700 people including sub-contractors and specialist vendors were involved in the construction works and not a day was lost over the two years of work to accidents.

BP's Shah Deniz 2 projects head Ewan Drummond said the "first jacket sail away is an important milestone and we are pleased to have achieved this as we move towards completion of other areas of the project. I would like to thank the government of Azerbaijan and [state oil company] Socar for their support and cooperation in moving this giant project forward."

 Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliev (right) with BP's Ewan Drummond

When complete and operational, the field will add 16bn m³/yr to Azerbaijan's gas exports, snaking in new pipelines across the Caucasus, Turkey and southern Europe before reaching Italy early next decade. Of the total, 10bn m³/yr are destined for Europe and 6bn m³/yr for Turkey.

William Powell