ACG shareholders consider buying shares held by Exxon and Chevron

Baku. 7 February. REPORT.AZ/ Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. are seeing what price they might get to sell out of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil project as they eye expansion elsewhere, Elshad Nasirov, Socar’s vice president for marketing and investment, said in an interview to Bloomberg.

“We have discussed this with both Exxon Mobil and Chevron,” Elshad Nasirov said.

“Everybody” at ACG is considering buying the shares held by Exxon and Chevron, but it will depend on the outcome of “market testing” and the price that emerges, Nasirov said in Baku.

The value of stakes in ACG grew after the Azerbaijani government agreed in 2017 to extend the development contract to 2050, according to Nasirov.

Notably, Chevron said in December that it had decided to sell its 9.6 percent stake in ACG, as well as its 8.9 percent share in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Exxon has yet to confirm Reuters’ report that it’s seeking as much as $2 billion from the sale of its 6.8 percent stake in ACG.

The existing ACG PSA was signed in September 1994 for 30 years. Oil production from the field began in November 1997.

BP Azerbaijan operates the development of the ACG block. The contract for development of the ACG block was signed on September 20, 1994. Shareholders of the project are BP - 30.37% (operator), AzACG (SOCAR) - 25.00%, "Chevron" - 9.57%, "Inpex" - 9.31%, "Equinor" (formerly "Statoil") - 7.27%, "ExxonMobil" - 6.79%, TPAO - 5.73%, "Itochu" - 3.65% and "ONGC Videsh Ltd." (OVL) - 2.31%.