Statoil and the ACG partnership have signed a $6bn investment agreement for the Chirag Oil project to further develop the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field in Azerbaijan.

The company said that Chirag Oil project will install new wells primarily targeting the currently producing Fasila reservoirs and Balakhany reservoir units, which are not yet exploited. It will also optimize the main Pereriv reservoir.

The project will comprise an installation located in the Chirag-Deep Water Gunashli (DWG) area of the ACG field, at a sea depth of approximately 170mt. The facility will be a single production, drilling and living quarters (PDQ) platform with capacity to produce 185 000 barrels of oil per day (gross).

The new platform will be partially integrated with the existing DWG facility via marine pipelines that import reservoir injection water and export produced water for disposal. In addition, oil and gas produced by the new platform will be processed at Sangachal Terminal.

ACG is presently developed with five full-scale offshore production platforms and the onshore Sangachal terminal. The SOCAR-developed Shallow Water Gunashli (SWG), on the north-western tip of the field, is also tied into ACG’s infrastructure. Despite extensive development and output exceeding a million barrels of oil equivalents, growth opportunities still abound on ACG.

Rune Hansen, asset manager in the ACG team of Statoil, said: “The Chirag Oil project is a breakthrough project with a new long-term growth vision for the Azeri- Chirag -Gunashli reservoir that enables its further recovery and resource management. This project is expected to deliver another 360 million barrels oil total to the partnership.”

The main design philosophy is to standardize platform design, building each new platform as identical to the previous installation as possible. This reduces engineering costs and enables platform operators to circulate easily between the field’s various installations. The first Chirag Oil project oil is expected in 2013.

The company said that the project will boost AGC’s total output to about 1 million barrels per day. Potential recovery from ACG is estimated at some 5 billion barrels of oil. About 1.4 billion barrels have so far been produced.

Statoil holds an 8.6% share in ACG, operator BP has a 34.1% stake, followed by Chevron at 10.2%, Azeri state owned SOCAR with 10%, INPEX with 10%, ExxonMobil at 8%, TPAO at 6.8%, Devon with 5.6%, ITOCHU at 3.6% and Hess with 2.7%.