BP PLC (BP) Thursday night restarted oil production at the 300,000 barrel a day capacity West Azeri oil platform, on Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field, a spokeswoman for the company said Friday. The Central Azeri platform on the same field, with capacity to pump 350,000 barrels of oil a day, remains shut down, she said.
Central Azeri was shut down in mid-September after a gas leak was discovered in the area of the field. West Azeri processes its gas on Central Azeri and also gets its power from the other platform, so was also shut down as a precaution. The shutdown reduced oil output from the ACG fields, a subsequent exports through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey, to around 850,000 barrels a day to 350,000 barrels a day.
BP has provided an alternate power link and a solution for gas disposal at West Azeri enabling it to restart safely, the spokeswoman said without going into further details.
A team of experts is on Central Azeri trying to determine the source of the gas and how to halt the leak, she said.