Strange statistics of Azerbaijani oil: who is right BP or SOCAR and State Statistical Committee?

Recently BP World Statistical Energy Review 2013 has been submitted to publicity and many researchers and companies refer to it (the report is published since 1951).

     However, the data about Azerbaijan seemed to be strange for Turan. According to BP’s data, during 2013 Azerbaijan extracted 931,000 barrels of oil a day or 46.2 million tons of oil. Production increased by 12,000 barrels a day or 500,000 tons against last year.

     On February 13, 2014 BP-Azerbaijan company released the report about the activities in Azerbaijan, where it mentioned that during 2013 32.3 million tons of oil was extracted within the framework of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) (reduction by 0.7 million tons). Production of condensate on the Shah-Deniz field totaled 2.4 million tons (growth by 0.48 million tons). Thus, during 2013 total production of liquid hydrocarbons by BP in Azerbaijan reduced by 220,000 tons.

 About 72% of entire oil of Azerbaijan is extracted on ACG. Considering condensate from Shah-Deniz, share of BP in the oil production in Azerbaijan exceeds 76%.

According to the Azerbaijan State Statistical Committee, which published its annual data on January 21, 2014, during 2013 Azerbaijan extracted 43,083,300 tons of oil and condensate.

According to State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, last year the country extracted 43,483,900 tons of oil and condensate. SOCAR believes that in 2013 growth of oil production in the country totaled only 94,100 tons.

  Turan has asked BP to explain the difference between its oil production data and official data of Azerbaijan. However, BP-Azerbaijan representatives have no direct relation to the Review. Those who draw up the reports refer to their experts and sources.

Azerbaijan is also to blame for that, because during the past 6-7 years it has not published the data of the onshore operation companies  and Azneft, production company of SOCAR. However, many experts abroad refer to BP’s data.—0—