BAKU: French oil company Total has postponed an investment decision on development of the Absheron gas and condensate field in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea until spring 2018 from December, the company official said on Wednesday.
Total and Azeri state energy company SOCAR formed a joint venture in 2009 to explore and develop the Absheron field area, which has estimated reserves of 350 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas and 45 million tonnes of condensate.
"We should sign some contracts, set the date to start drilling and that's why an investment decision on Absheron will be made in the spring 2018, most likely in March," Denis Lemarchal, Total Azerbaijan's managing director, told reporters.
Total said in November last year it had signed an agreement with SOCAR to develop Absheron, the field which it discovered in 2011, boosting the ex-Soviet republic's potential as a major gas exporter.
The agreement established contractual and commercial terms for a first phase of production for the field, but the final investment decision has yet to be made.
Lemarchal said the first drilling is expected to start in January and would take 15 months.
He added that Total expected to get the first gas from Absheron at the end of 2019-beginnng of 2020.
The cost of the first stage of development is estimated at $1 billion, while its annual output is seen at 1.5 bcm of gas.
The produced gas will supply Azerbaijan's domestic market, while condensate will be sent along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs from Azerbaijan via Georgia to Turkey.
The project's second stage is expected to be implemented in 2022-2023 to produce an additional 5 bcm of gas per year.
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