Despite Aliyev’s frustration oil production of British Petroleum decreased in Azerbaijan
The British company “British Petroleum” didn’t manage to raise the level of oil production in the biggest oil field in the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, even after the dissatisfaction expressed by the President of the Republic last year. In the first quarter of 2013 only 8.06 million tons of oil is produced from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli. As the BP representatives notice, it is 8.4 percent less than it was last year, the article published by the "Caucasus Online" agency sBays.
The article says that the British Petroleum company does not comment on this recession. The article also reminds that during the autumn of last year, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev expressed his dissatisfaction about the oil level of BP Company. He noted that the sudden decline occurred precisely because of blunders that the BP Company that leads the consortium of oil fields, made.
After that, the company's personnel was changed there. However, BP-Azerbaijan’s Vice President Kemp Copeland’s withdrawal is not connected with President’s dissatisfaction.
Leadership of SOCAR, however, does not exclude that the presence of BP in the consortium is possible in the near future.
However, as soon as the magazine “Forbes” published an article in which notes of warning were present due to the collision of the Azerbaijani government and the British company, the parties started to pretend that everything goes smoothly.
Later, the BP-Azerbaijan Company gradually increased oil production in Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli. The production rose to 45,000 barrels, or 6.8% in a short time. According to the agreement, which was accepted by the British company and the SOCAR, the BP promises not to reduce the oil production. However, the statistics for the first quarter of the year indicates that BP could not keep even this promise.
On May 2 BP CEO Mr. Dudley arrived in Baku and had a meeting with Ilham Aliev. According to the spread information it was noted at the meeting that the parties were satisfied with the cooperation. However, it is assumed that at the meeting, the details of which had not been made public, the reduction of oil production in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli have been discussed.
Supposedly, it was said that reduction is expected this year, the article says.
The publication states that according to BP the reason of oil production reduction is in the fact that it needs additional investments, as well as a decrease of oil fields.
Since 2011 oil production in Azerbaijan reduced. So, if in 2010 the country produced 50.8 million tons of oil, in 2011 the oil production decreased by 10.8% to 45.4 million tons. In 2012, oil production declined by 5.3% to 43 million tons. During the first month of 2013 the oil production in Azerbaijan decreased by 2.6% and by 4.4% during 3 month.