First gas flows from TotalEnergies and SOCAR’s Caspian Sea field

France’s energy giant TotalEnergies and its partner State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) have brought on stream a gas and condensate field in the Caspian Sea offshore Azerbaijan.

TotalEnergies revealed on Monday, 10 July 2023, that the first development phase of the Absheron gas and condensate field in the Caspian Sea, located around 100 km southeast of Baku, had come online. According to the oil major, the first phase connects a subsea production well to a new gas processing platform, which is linked to SOCAR’s existing facilities in Oil Rocks.

It comes with a production capacity of 4 million cubic meters of gas per day and 12,000 barrels a day of condensate. The gas will be sold on the domestic market in Azerbaijan. TotalEnergies believes that the development of the Absheron field provides an additional gas supply to meet growing demand, at “a competitive technical cost and low greenhouse gas emissions intensity,” in line with its strategy.

Nicolas Terraz, President, Exploration & Production at TotalEnergies, remarked: “We are very pleased to announce the start-up of the Absheron gas field, the result of our exploration team’s success. This project is in line with the company’s strategy of meeting the growing demand for gas and reinforces our partnership with the national company SOCAR.”

The Oil Rocks field, which is an administrative part of the Pirallahy district, is located 110 km east of Baku, 50 km southeast of Pirallahy Island in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. This field serves as a strategic communication and infrastructure centre connecting other oil fields of Azerbaijan with up to 70 per cent of SOCAR’s annual oil and gas production being transferred to the coast from there.

TotalEnergies and SOCAR both hold a 50 per cent interest in the Absheron development, which is operated by the joint company JOCAP. This is one of the three start-ups, which TotalEnergies planned for this year in a bid to boost its hydrocarbon production by approximately 2 per cent to 2.5 Mboe/d in 2023. The other two are Block 10 in Oman and Mero 2 in Brazil.

Continuing its growth momentum in LNG, the oil major is putting the wheels into motion to strengthen its position in Europe in 2023 with the commissioning of two floating regasification terminals, the first of which, located in Lubmin, Germany, is already operational.

Recently, the French giant’s Tyra II redevelopment project in the Danish North Sea also came another step closer to the first gas, which is slated for December 2023.