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MOL Group has signed commercial agreements with its joint venture partners for the extraction of natural gas reserves in Azerbaijan, the Hungarian multinational oil and gas company said in a statement.
As the statement reads, after SOCAR and BP, MOL Group is the third largest owner of the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) field in Azerbaijan, where gas layers have been discovered under and above the oil-bearing strata. The partners have now agreed on their extraction and commercial exploitation. In addition, MOL and SOCAR have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on further hydrocarbon exploration in Azerbaijan.
The commercial agreements will complement the existing ACG production sharing contract, allowing the partners to explore, appraise, develop and produce gas reserves in the ACG field.
The gas reserves in the ACG are estimated to be significant, with volumes of up to 4,000 billion cubic feet (about 112 billion cubic meters),
MOL said.
Drilling of the first extraction well from the West Chirag platform has already started, with gas production expected to start by 2025. The well’s role is important because its production will allow gas reserves to be assessed, which will help inform future development plans.
The statement quoted Zsolt Hernádi, CEO of MOL Group, as saying: “This day is also an outstanding one for economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Hungary, and thanks to the excellent government-to-government relations between our countries, we have been able to further deepen our business cooperation. ACG is our crown jewel as it is the source of most of our international hydrocarbon production. MOL Group’s participation in the project is also a flagship for economic relations between the two countries, and ACG plays a key role in the energy security of Central Europe.
The extraction of the field will provide flexibility in oil supply to our refineries in Slovakia and Croatia, thus the partnership will benefit the whole region,”
said Zsolt Hernádi.
MOL Group entered Azerbaijan in 2020, where it acquired a 9.57 percent stake in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field, one of the world’s largest oil fields. In addition, the Hungarian company has 8.9 percent stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which transports crude oil to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Via MTI, Featured image: Pixabay