Two-week output suspension for BP’s Shah Deniz platform

Oil and gas major BP has started a planned maintenance programme on the Shah Deniz Alpha platform in the Caspian Sea and Shah Deniz 1 facilities inside the Sangachal Terminal in Azerbaijan.

This scheduled maintenance is part of the Shah Deniz annual work programme and will entail the suspension of production from the Shah Deniz Alpha for the duration of 14 days, BP explained in a statement on Tuesday, emphasising that this is part of normal operations. The suspension started on 14 August.

As detailed by the company, the programme scope for the Sangacahl Terminal includes various projects such as safety critical equipment preventative maintenance and inspection, flare cables replacement, gas analyzer package tie-ins (for measuring methane intensity), monoethylene glycol line overpressure protection works, valves changeouts, nucleonic sources replacement and other maintenance and inspection activities.

In parallel, similar activities including various repair works, gas analyzer package tie-ins, nucleonic sources replacement and three complex valve replacements will be undertaken on the Shah Deniz Alpha platform.

The planning for the programme started in 2021 and the suspension is also included in the annual production forecast.

During the programme, the Shah Deniz Bravo platform and overall the Shah Deniz 2 production and export system and the Shah Deniz 2 facilities inside the Sangachal Terminal will continue their normal operations enabling gas supplies to the regional and European markets to continue.

Production from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field (Central Azeri, East Azeri, West Azeri, Chirag, Deepwater Gunashli and West Chirag), the ACG and EOP phases of the Sangachal Terminal as well as export operations via BTC will also continue as normal.

These planned events deliver routine inspection, maintenance and project delivery activities. They are a necessary part of the long-term reliability, integrity and production performance, driven by repair and facility modification work that can only be performed during a plant outage.

The field, discovered in 1999, is one of the world’s largest gas-condensate fields. It is located on the deepwater shelf of the Caspian Sea, 70 km southeast of Baku, in water depths ranging from 50 to 500 m.

About two months ago, plans were revealed for the reduction of the Alpha platform’s overall carbon footprint and increasing its operational efficiency by providing a long-term, high-availability power supply. A joint venture between Houston-based KBR and Azerbaijan’s SOCAR was awarded a FEED and turnaround engineering, and procurement support services contract for this project.