Socar Restarts Bulla Gasfield in Caspian

Two weeks after Azerbaijan’s state-run Socar announced that it resumed gas production from the 200bn m³ Umid field it told NGW October 9 that a new well was commissioned at the Bulla Deniz field, which it also operates.

The company said that well 123, drilled by platform 122 at a depth of 6,153 metres, was commissioned with a daily output of 180-200 metric tons of condensate and 800,000 m³ of gas. The drilling operations started in January 2017. The platform had drilled wells 124 and 125 and account for nearly all the field's output, which before commissioning the new well, was 1.1mn m³/d, a quarter of its peak in 1982. “Cumulatively, 280mn m³ was produced in nine months of 2017. Currently, the production volume reached around 1.9mn m³/d, and would reach 3mn m³/d in 2018 after commissioning two further wells. The volume will continue to rise after that as well.

Socar also started building platform 12 in March 2017 to drill a further appraisal well and four production wells at the field with combined output of 2.5mn m³/d. Socar is planning to commission two production wells at the Bulla-Deniz field next year, each with capacity to produce 500,000 m³/d. 

Ilham Shaban