Norway’s Statoil and State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) were expected to sign an agreement on the joint development of the Zafar-Mashal block in Azerbaijan’s section of the Caspian Sea on 8 April.
“It will be signed at SOCAR today at 16:00 (13:00CET),” a Statoil executive told New Europe in Baku on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on 8 April.
SOCAR estimates that Zafar-Mashal, a deepwater block located about 110 kilometres southeast of Baku in Azerbaijan's section of the Caspian Sea, contains 300 billion cubic metres of natural gas and 37 million metric tonnes of condensate.
The first contract for the development of the prospective Zafar-Mashal offshore structure was signed between SOCAR and US ExxonMobil in April 1999 but the contract was closed due to discovery of commercially unattractive volumes of hydrocarbons.
Azerbaijan is the second largest contributor to Statoil's international production - about 20% of international production comes from the former Soviet republic.
Statoil Azerbaijan started its work in 1992. The company is a partner on Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea. The Shah Deniz consortium is expected to choose between the Nabucco West and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe by the end of June. Statoil holds 42.5% of the shares in TAP.
