Socar Completing First Appraisal Well In Umid Field
Rovnag Abdullayev, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (Socar) announced on 24 November that the company is nearing completion of the first of six planned appraisal wells in the Umid field. He said the well was drilled to a depth of 6,500ms and “confirmed previous reserves estimates that place the field reserves at approximately 200 bcm [of gas] and 30-40mn tons of condensate.” The well will be completed this month and be followed by a second appraisal well in 2011. A Socar official told MEES that the company “could finish the exploratory phase by late 2012 - early 2013, even though the company has not yet decided on the timetable and cost of a potential development.”
Umid is located 40km offshore Baku and was discovered in 1953. Initial exploratory work was carried out in 1972 and more systematically after 1977 when nine appraisal wells were drilled up to 1992. Khoshbakht Yusifzade, Socar’s First Vice President, told a Cabinet meeting last week that the exploration of Umid will act as a precursor for the exploration of the adjoining Babek field, whose reserves could be even larger. “Good results in Umid increase the prospectivity of Babek,” he said. If initial estimates are confirmed, Umid/Babek could be the second largest Caspian offshore gas field after Shah Deniz, and could produce at a peak rate of 15 bcm/year. While such a production rate would meet the needs of the Nabucco pipeline project, regardless of either Iraqi or Turkmen exports, Umid/Babek gas would most likely be allocated to Azeri projects such as the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector (AGRI) and perhaps White Stream, which are intended to limit Baku’s increasing dependence on Turkey for transit.
Copyright MEES 2010.
