Today, the Shah Deniz consortium announced the commencement of production from the East South flank at 540m water depth – a major milestone planned for 2021 and achieved safely and on schedule. Production from this deep-water flank started up on 30 June 2021 following the successful completion of all related offshore construction and commissioning works, Report informs, referring to BP-Azerbaijan.
The new East South production flank consists of four wells, two new flowlines, and a number of subsea structures connected to the world-class Shah Deniz reservoir. It is expected that the flank will be at full production rates in the third quarter of 2021.
Gary Jones, Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey for bp, the operator of Shah Deniz, said: “This is the biggest milestone we had planned to achieve in Shah Deniz this year, and we are very proud to have achieved it safely, on schedule and within the budget despite the challenges and restrictions caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
Following the completion of the main Shah Deniz 2 infrastructure projects and the achievement of the first gas in 2018, the entire Shah Deniz team has been working hard to deliver new wells on the remaining flanks and start up new infrastructure in the Shah Deniz subsea system ramping up production from the giant field.
“I am pleased to say that we expect the newly-started East South flank to add about 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to the Shah Deniz field production using two manifolds and over 40km of flowlines to the Shah Deniz 2 facilities. I would like to thank all projects and operations teams whose hard work has enabled the delivery of this very important project in a very challenging time and under extremely hard pandemic conditions.”