Lukoil does not plan to drop out of Shah-Deniz project

The Russian biggest private oil company LUKoil does not plan to sell its 10% share in the project for development of offshore gas condensate field Shah-Deniz on the Azerbaijani shelf of the Caspian Sea," LUKoil President Vagit Alekperov told journalists in Baku.

"This definitely not happen," he answered to this question.

Before Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Baku Russian press wrote that Rosneft would like to join a big gas project Absheron in Azerbaijan. The media claimed that Rosneft is going to buy 10% share of LUKoil in the Shah-Deniz project. They believed that this is the reason why Vagit Alekperov was included into the Russian delegation.

* Total resources of Shah-Deniz are estimated at 1.2 trillion cub.m. of gas and 240 million tons of condensate. The first stage of development of the field envisages production of 178 billion cub.m. of gas and 34 million tons of condensate. Development of the second stage of the field will begin in 2018. It is planned to extract 16 billion cub.m. of gas at the second phase of the project.

The partners of the Shah-Deniz production sharing agreement are: BP (operator with 25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), SOCAR (10%), LUKoil (10%), NICO (10%), Total (10%) and TPAO (9%). -0--