Halliburton, Socar Form Azeri JV
Azeri state-owned Socar’s drilling unit (Socar AQS) and US giant Halliburton have signed a memorandum of understanding to form a joint venture to provide a broad suite of oilfield products and services in Azerbaijan, Socar said February 10. The JV will be based in Baku and operations are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2020, once the details have been finalised.
Socar AQS is responsible for drilling mainly gas wellls in Socar-operated fields. Turan Drilling, a JV between Socar AQS and BP, has also committed to drill the wells in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block in framework of their major expansion phase.
Socar AQS is the only Azeri company drilling abroad. Based on its 2018 contract, it has to drill a well in each of Bangladesh’s Semutang South-1, Begumganj-4, Madarganj-1 and Shariatpur fields. It completed its first well in Bangladesh in January 2019 and is now drilling the third well, the company told NGW.
It has also won a contract worth $100mn for 40 wells at the Botas-operated Tuz Golu underground gas storage facility in Turkey in October 2019, in order to expand its capacity from the current 600mn m3 to 5.4bn m3 by 2023.