BP shuts down oil production at offshore platform in Azerbaijan

Exploration & Production

April 29, 2024, by Melisa Čavčić

UK-headquartered energy giant BP has temporarily stopped production from one of the platforms at its giant oilfield in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan to carry out planned maintenance works.

The production at Deepwater Gunashli, one of the seven Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) platforms in the Caspian, was suspended on April 25 for 15 days to enable efficient maintenance, inspection, and project work to be undertaken. The planned maintenance (turnaround – TAR) works are part of its ACG annual work program.

According to BP, various projects, such as valve changeouts, nucleonic source replacement, and required repair works will be undertaken during the TAR, which is part of normal operations. The oil major explains that the planning phase of the program started in 2023. These activities are mentioned in the firm’s 2024 annual work program and budget and the shut-down is also included in the annual production forecast.

Located on the east side of the Gunashli field at 175 meters of water depth, the Deepwater Gunashli (DWG) complex is the third phase of development of the ACG field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. This platform has been producing oil since April 2008. The complex comprises two bridge-linked platforms: a 48-slot drilling, utilities, and quarters (DUQ) platform, and a process, gas compression, water injection, and utilities (PCWU) platform.

The production is exported via two 30-inch oil pipeline tie-ins and a single 28-inch gas pipeline tie-in into pre-installed pipeline junctions on the Azeri field subsea export pipelines to the onshore Sangachal Terminal. In addition, three subsea water injection wells have been installed in the DWG development, where subsea water injection helps boost oil production by injecting seawater into the DWG reservoir to increase its pressure.

Elsewhere in the Caspian Sea waters, business continues as usual, since production from the other ACG platforms, as well as the platforms on the Shah Deniz field, Sangachal Terminal operations, and export operations via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP and SCPX) continue as normal.

“This planned event is a necessary part of the long-term reliability, integrity and production performance, driven by repair and facility modification work that can only be performed during a plant outage,” emphasized BP.

These maintenance works come shortly after the UK player began oil production from its new 48-slot production, drilling, and quarters platform in the Caspian Sea. The ACG partners are BP (operator, 30.37%), SOCAR (25.0%), MOL (9.57%), Inpex (9.31%), Equinor (7.27%), ExxonMobil (6.79%), TPAO (5.73%), ITOCHU (3.65%), and ONGCVidesh (2.31%).