SOCAR aims to achieve an oil recovery factor of over 40%
"The ultimate oil recovery factor at the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field is expected to exceed 40 percent."
As 1news.az reports, this was stated by Babek Huseynov, Vice President of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR).
He noted that, along with the millions of barrels of oil produced to date, the ACG field still holds billions of barrels of oil reserves yet to be extracted. In terms of its scale, permeability, porosity and other geological indicators, the field is one of the world's leading oil assets.
The SOCAR Vice President emphasized that the field has already reached its production peak and is currently going through a stage of natural decline. Under these conditions, the main goal is to extract maximum value from the existing asset and to make the most efficient use of its production potential.
According to B. Huseynov, to this end SOCAR decided to work jointly with the project operator, BP, in the process of assessing the field's further production potential. One of the main topics of discussion between the parties was determining the ultimate oil recovery factor for ACG.
He drew attention to the fact that, based on the results of the joint assessments carried out, the parties concluded that it was possible to achieve an ultimate oil recovery factor above 40 percent. In determining this indicator, the quality of the oil, the characteristics of the field and the existing infrastructure were taken into account.
The SOCAR representative stated that an ultimate oil recovery factor of over 40 percent is considered a very high indicator for the global oil industry as well.
According to him, in order to realize this potential, large-scale seismic surveys and other technical work are being carried out at the field. SOCAR's approach was to require BP to assess, first and foremost, all technically feasible options for the project, without limiting itself exclusively to economic frameworks.
B. Huseynov noted that SOCAR also joined the process with its own independent technical assessment. As a result, an approach to updating the ACG field was formed, based on the joint technical vision of SOCAR and BP.
He added that the goal is to fully determine the real potential of ACG — one of Azerbaijan's most important oil assets — to combine technical capabilities within a single project and to maximize the realization of the field's future production capabilities.
