Baku ups Gas Output, Eyes Expansion
Azerbaijan produced about 1.992bn m3 sale gas in January, about 26.4% more than January 2018, the national statistic committee said February 19. Gross gas production also rose 23.1% year-on-year to above 3bn m3.
State-run Socar told NGW that Shah Deniz (stage 1&2) produced 1.412bn m³ in January, 52.3% more than January 2018.
Baku forecasts 24.73bn m3 sale gas production for 2019, about 28% more than 2018, thanks to production growth in the Shah Deniz 2, Bulla Deniz and Umid fields.
Socar said that exports are expected to go up by 23.3% on year to 12bn m3 2019. “In January exports stood at 1.134bn m3, of which 360.6mn m³ was delivered to Georgia and the rest to Turkey,” it said.
Last year, the country’s domestic demand stood at 10.5bn m3, excluding 580mn m3 lost in the grid. Baku plans to solve this, by decommissioning a 60-year-old processing plant with 2bn m³/yr capacity. Baku approved February 15 a plan to invest $4.2bn in a gas processing-petrochemical complex with 10bn m³/yr capacity, which would also produce 850,000 metric tons/yr of petrochemicals.
Baku prepares for SGC meeting
Baku is preparing to host the fifth meeting of the Consultative Council (CC) on the project to create the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) On February 20, aimed to export 16bn m3/yr gas to Turkey and EU by 2021 in initial stage.
For the first time, representatives of Serbia, Hungary and San Marino will take part in the meeting. Other participants will be energy ministers of Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Croatia as well as deputy energy ministers of Georgia, Albania and Italy, some high ranking officials of Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Turkmenistan as well as international companies and banks, which have involved in the projects.
This will be the second time that Turkmenistan – as a potential gas source for SGC expansion – has taken part in an SGC CC meeting. The final capacity of the European section of SGC (Trans Adriatic Pipeline) is 20bn m3/yr or twice its initial capacity, and expected to be in place by the mid-2020s. Azerbaijan is looking for new markets for its gas boom and a gas supplier partner.
The initial phase of SGC would supply 10bn m3/yr gas to Greece (10%) and Italy (80%) as well as Bulgaria (10%) via interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB).
Azerbaijan’s energy minister announced February 1 that Azerbaijan is developing the Albanian gas grid and can supply 0.5bn m3/yr.