BP Attempts to Sooth SOCAR and Azeri Ire
BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley agreed to work closely with the State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan at a Caspian Sea oil field where Azeri President Ilham Aliyev blamed the U.K. producer for declining output, reported Zulfugar Agayev.
Dudley met with Rovnaq Abdullayev, the CEO of Socar, as the state oil producer is known, in London to discuss plans for the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli crude project, BP’s Baku office said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday. ACG provides about 78 percent of Azerbaijan’s crude output, while BP gets about 3 percent of its output from the former Soviet republic.
“It was an open and constructive meeting and the task ahead is clear,” Dudley said in the statement. “BP is fully committed to Azerbaijan and the effective management of the ACG field complex, one of the world’s great oil fields.”
BP, the operator of ACG, had made “grave mistakes” that resulted in an “unexpected decline” at the country’s largest oil deposit, Aliyev said in a televised speech on Oct. 10. He called for “serious measures” to stem the slump.
ACG output fell 12 percent in the first half of 2012 from a year earlier, according to data on BP website. The field produced 35.4 million tons last year.
BP plans to restart oil production at the Deepwater Gunashli platform later this month after closing it as part of a major planned maintenance program on Sept. 25, Tamam Bayatli, a spokeswoman for the U.K. producer in Baku, the Azeri capital, said by e-mail.
Deepwater Gunashli produced 116,000 barrels a day in the first half of the year, according to data on BP website. The other platforms — Chirag, East Azeri, West Azeri and Central Azeri — continue to operate as normal, Bayatli said.
