President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received bp CEO Robert Dudley today, the press service of the head of state reports. It is supposed that issues, concerning bp’s activity in Azerbaijan, prospects of gas production increase and the related problem of delay in the Trans Adriatic gas pipeline’s commissioning which was rescheduled several times because of the route change within Italy, were discussed at the meeting. Besides, discussed was an issue associated with the coordination of the work on the global gas markets due to Brexit scheduled for the end of this year.

It is noteworthy that bp is an operator of two ongoing projects on development of ACG fields and Shah Deniz gas condensate field in the Caspian Sea. BP is also performing exploration operations at nearshore shallow-water areas, and is an operator of the deepwater “Araz”, “Alov”, “Sherg” mega project which has been “frozen” since 2001 and may contain up to 1 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

Turkey is a main importer of Azerbaijani gas today. According to the data of the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA), Turkey imported 46.3 bcm, 55.2 bcm, 50.3 bcm in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively.

In 2019 gas production at Shah Deniz will total 17.389 billion cubic meters vs. 11.5 billion cubic meters fixed last year. Thus, gas production on this field will increase by 51% in 2019. The overall gas production in the country is expected at 36.3 billion cubic meters in 2019.

According to the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan, a total of 30.6 billion cubic meters of gas was produced in the republic in 2018. An 18.6% increase in gas production is expected at the end of 2019.

The contract on development of Shah Deniz field was signed in Baku on June 4, 1996 under the leadership of the National Leader of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev, and ratified by Milli Majlis on October 17 of the same year.

Parties to Shah Deniz project are as follows:  BP (operator, 28.8%), Petronas (15.5%), SOCAR (16.7%), LUKoil (10%), NICO (10%), TPAO (19%).

The phase I gas production on the field is carried out by Alfa platform, while the phase II production is performed by Bravo platform.