Possible sale of Norwegian company’s interest in Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oilfield follows strong suggestions of company’s passive stance on hydrocarbon developments in Azerbaijan
Оригинальный текст опубликован на сайте «Upstream», 22 August 2023 7:45 GMT . Автор: Материал доступен по .
and
Norway’s Equinor is considering a potential sale of the assets it holds in Azerbaijan, according to media reports.
Equinor has enlisted financial advisor Jefferies to explore selling its Azeri operations — including a 7% stake in the BP-operated Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oilfield — that are thought to be worth about $1 billion, Bloomberg reported, quoting sources with knowledge of the issue.
ACG is the largest offshore oilfield in the country and, as well as Equinor and BP, inlcudes Azerbaijan’s state-owned Socar, Hungary’s MOL, US supermajor ExxonMobil, Inpex of Japan and other foreign companies among the stakeholders.
Bloomberg suggested that, in the event of a sale, Equinor would have to offer its stake to Socar in the first instance.
Equinor also holds interests in other fields in Azerbaijan’s Caspian basin, and in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that carries crude from Azerbaijan to international markets via Turkey.
When approched for a comment on the possible sale of the ACG stake, an Equinor spokesperson told Upstream: “We never comment on market speculation.”
Article continues below the advert
In May, the Norwegian company also refused to comment on suggestions in the Azeri capital of Baku that the company is considering exiting from its 50:50 venture with Socar at the Karabagh offshore field, which was established following the drilling of the KPS-4 discovery well in March 2020.
Equinor has been operating Karabagh under a risk service agreement that it signed with Socar in 2018.
Three previous wildcats at Karabagh drilled by a previous operating consortium in the late 1990s confirmed estimated recoverable reserves of about 73 million barrels of oil and between 5 billion and 6 billion cubic metres of gas, according to earlier pronouncements from Socar.
Industry analysts in Azerbaijan have repeatedly hinted at Equinor’s low interest in Azerbaijan while the countrystrives to accommodate Europe’s requests for higher natural gas supplies to help replace reduced Russian pipeline deliveries.
“This news [on Equinor’s possible exit from ACG] is not as bad as it might appear at a first sight. We need this stake to belong back to a country or at least to a strong player that can add value to the development of the country from technological, commercial and social perspectives”, Baku-based executive manager and investor Khalil Khuseynov wrote .