Following the transaction, the UAE national company will own a 30% interest in TotalEnergies’ Absheron asset
Оригинальный текст опубликован на сайте «Upstream», 4 August 2023 6:54 GMT . Автор: Материал доступен по .
and in New Delhi
State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has acquired a 30% stake in TotalEnergies’ recently on stream Absheron gas condensate field in the Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea waters.
Adnoc on Friday confirmed the deal, noting that on completion of the transaction, which is subject to customary regulatory approvals, it would hold a 30% participating interest in Absheron, with Azeri state-owned Socar and TotalEnergies each holding stakes of 35%.
“Entering into a strategic partnership with Socar also elevates Adnoc’s long-standing partnership with TotalEnergies, which until now had held a 50% share alongside Socar in Absheron,” stated Adnoc, without disclosing the financial details of the transaction.
Adnoc said the partnership would allow the company “to build a major footprint in a region with prolific natural resources and significant growth potential, facilitating a route into attractive international growth markets for gas in Europe and Central Asia”.
“As the world transitions to a low-carbon energy system, natural gas will play a crucial role as a key transition fuel, with this investment further cementing Adnoc’s leading position as a reliable supplier of lower-carbon energy,” the company said.
World-class asset
Musabbeh Al Kaabi, executive director of Adnoc’s low-carbon solutions and international growth business, said that with “global gas demand expected to steadily increase over the coming decades, Adnoc will continue to responsibly meet the world’s energy needs by developing and producing natural gas from world-class assets such as Absheron”.
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In a separate statement issued on Friday, the French operator said: “TotalEnergies and its partner Socar have signed an agreement to sell a 15% participating interest each in the Absheron gas field to Adnoc.”
Nicolas Terraz, president of exploration and production at TotalEnergies, stated that the company welcomes Adnoc as “one of its strategic partners, into the Absheron gas field, where production of the first phase started in early July, and which offers a significant further development potential to meet the growing gas demand”.
A partner with Baku-based energy consultancy Caspian Barrel, Ilham Shaban, said that the Adnoc’s entry widens options of arranging shareholder and project financing to move this Caspian deepwater project forward.
While European banks often reluctant to provide long-term multibillion loans to hydrocarbon greenfields, the participation of the new shareholder may facilitate raising required financing in the Middle East and elsewhere, Shaban suggested.
Adnoc is also expected to be presented with opportunities to develop its business in the field of wind and solar energy in Azerbaijan. That is a mutually beneficial deal for the company and Azerbaijan, he concluded.
Absheron start up
said that along with partner state-owned Socar, it had brought on stream the “first phase of development of the Absheron gas and condensate field in the Caspian Sea, around 100 kilometres southeast of Baku”.
“The development of the Absheron field provides an additional gas supply to meet growing demand, at a competitive technical cost and low greenhouse gas emissions intensity, in line with TotalEnergies’ strategy,” the French company stated.
TotalEnergies added that the project’s first phase “connects a subsea production well to a new gas processing platform, itself linked to Socar’s existing facilities”.
The first phase has production capacity of 4 million cubic metres per day of gas and 12,000 barrels per day of condensate, with the gas to be sold to Azerbaijan’s domestic market.
Gas imports
Absheron’s progress is being closely watched in Europe, where officials hope to double imports of Azerbaijan gas over the next several years to compensate for lost Russian pipeline gas deliveries.
According to TotalEnergies, the early production system scheme for Absheron is based on the tie-back of one subsea well — ABD001 — to a shallow-water receiving platform near Azeri national oil company Socar’s operated Oil Rocks field, 34 kilometres to the north.
Absheron is believed to contain recoverable gas reserves of about 350 Bcm and more than 800 million barrels of condensate.
Authorities in Baku hope the start-up of early gas production at Absheron will revive interest from major international oil and gas investors that has waned since BP exited another Caspian exploration project in Azerbaijan, known as the Shallow Water Absheron Peninsula block.
