London — UK services company Petrofac said Monday its joint venture with Azerbaijan's state-owned Socar had won a contract to support development work at the major offshore Absheron gas field.
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RegistroAfter Shah Deniz 2, Absheron -- which has estimated reserves of some 350 Bcm -- is the next mega-gas project in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian, and is being developed by a consortium of Socar and Total.
"Petrofac, in a joint venture with Socar, has secured an engineering and technical services contract to support Total and Socar's exploration and productionactivities in Azerbaijan," it said.
Absheron is expected to produce its first gas in 2020, Socar and Total have said previously.
Petrofac said the new deal was a 12-month contract, with an option to extend, to support activity at Absheron where gas was first discovered in 2011.
Socar's semi-submersible drilling rig Heydar Aliyev completed drilling of a first well earlier this year.
FULL-FIELD DEVELOPMENT
Socar has said that following first gas next year, the full-field development will take place three to five years later.
The development plan for Absheron has been structured in the same way as previous mega-projects such as the giant ACG oil field complex, where a first phasewith initial output is followed by full-field development.
The first phase is expected to produce an estimated 2 Bcm/year of gas, according to previous estimates from Total. This will be followed by an additional 5 Bcm/year in the full-field development phase.
That suggests total output of some 7 Bcm/year from Absheron by 2025 at the latest.
As well as supplying the domestic market, production from Absheron is also set to feed into the Southern Gas Corridor to supplement flows from the 16 Bcm/year Shah Deniz 2 project to Turkey and Europe.
-- Stuart Elliott, Stuart.Elliott@spglobal.com
-- Edited by James Burgess, james.burgess@spglobal.com