During five months 2015 Oil Fund received only $158 million from Shah Deniz field

Since 2007 till June 1, 2015 incomes of SOFAZ from development of the gas condensate field Shah Deniz in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea totaled $2,278,000,000.

According to the Fund, from January to May 2015 $158.2 million has been transferred to SOFAZ from the Shah Deniz project, of which $41 million in May 2015.

Turan agency reminded that during 2014 $523 million has been transferred to the Oil Fund from the Shah Deniz project implementation, of which $296 million during six months in 2014.

Several factors have affected reduction of Azerbaijan’s profit from the Shah Deniz project: first of all, cost of condensate dropped by almost 45%, because of slump of oil prices, during the same period last year. Secondly, gas export price decreased by approximately 7-9%. Thirdly, profit of the state went down, because of growth of costs of the Shah Deniz Phase 2 project.

Resources of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cub.m. of gas. The contract for the field development was signed in 1996, the field was discovered in June 1999 and gas export to Turkey started in July 2007.

The shares of the partners of the contract are distributed as following: BP – operator (28.8%), TPAO (19%), Petronas (15.5%), SOCAR (10%), LUKoil (10%), NICO (10%) and SGC Upstream (6.7%).

SOFAZ was established in December 1999, but it has actually started to work in June 2001. By that time its assets totaled $271 million.

By April 1, 2015, SOFAZ’s assets decreased by 5.86% against early 2015 ($37,104,100) and totaled $34,930,500.—0—