アゼルバイジャン・ＡＣＧプロジェクトの現状と未来

Abstract

The ACG Oil Field is situated offshore Azerbaijan, about 100-140 kilometers ESE of Baku, in water depth between 150 and 450 meters.The ACG megastructure is comprised of three culminations, namely the Deep Water Gunashli, Chirag and Azeri field. On 12 December 1994, the Azeri Government awarded the Production Sharing Agreement (“PSA”) to the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (“AIOC”). AIOC consists of nine international oil companies, including ITOCHU. The ACG PSA is for a period of thirty years and will expire in December, 2024.The ACG area is estimated to contain in excess of 5 billion barrels of recoverable reserves. The first production from Chirag platform started in November 1997. The start-up of production in Central Azeri, East and West Azeri and Deep Water Gunashli will be phased in from the beginning of Q1 2005 to 2008 across 4 producing platforms, 3 in Azeri (Phase 1 and Phase 2), and 1 in Deep Water Gunashli (Phase 3).The structure of the giant ACG Oil Field is a WNW to ESE trending, steep-dipping thrusted anticline. The main ACG reservoir is composed of Pliocene large river dominated lacustrine delta sandstone named as Pereriv and Balakhany sandstones.Currently, AIOC has drilled 18 wells on the Chirag 1 platform, of which 14 are producing wells and 4 are water injection wells. The production from the Pereriv sandstone is over 140,000 b/d crude oil.Phase 1 and 2 developments have been in the execution stages since September 2001 and September 2002, respectively. Phase 3 development starts in September 2004 and the total ACG field peak production rate is expected to exceed 1 million barrels a day. One of the export routes for such production will be the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (“BTC”) pipeline that is 1,768 kilometers in length and will be completed in early 2005.