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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (40576)	10/1/2008 6:59:02 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Respond to of 221927

SOCAR Calls Force Majeure as Oil Output Drops A further drop in Azerbaijani oil production following a gas leak last week has prompted the state oil firm SOCAR to declare force majeure on some shipments, a SOCAR source said. According to the source, the country's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields in the Caspian Sea were producing 300,000 barrels per day, a third of their usual 900,000 barrels per day. The development aggravates problems at the BP-led group that produces almost all Azerbaijan's oil, a month after it suspended production following an explosion on a key pipeline to Turkey and a brief war between Russia and Georgia. As production and exports to Turkey resumed this month, the group had said it was confident it would meet its output target. But the gas leak near an offshore platform last week forced it to halt production at two installations. BP-Azerbaijan declined to comment on the report that output had declined further and on the reported claim of force majeure. Last week, BP in London said that output at the ACG fields was cut to around 40 percent of its rate before the gas leak. The SOCAR source said force majeure had been declared on three crude export cargoes it had sold to traders Sumato and Glencore, which had been due to load from the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan between the end of September and mid-October. The contracts included two Azeri Light crude cargoes of one million barrels each, bought by Sumato and Glencore. He also said SOCAR had postponed a tender for another Ceyhan cargo for loading between Oct, 20-25. "If the situation does not change, we may cancel this tender," he said. The pipeline to Ceyhan can pump over one million barrels per day, or over one percent of global oil supply. SOCAR said that because of the pipeline's stoppage in August, it would sell 300,000 tons of oil to Iran across the Caspian Sea. This deal has also been scrapped because of the latest production problems. BP is the largest shareholder in both the ACG fields and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, with stakes of 34.1 percent and 30.1 percent, respectively. BP's partners in the ACG fields include Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Devon Energy, Japan's INPEX and Itochu, Turkey's TPAO and SOCAR. SOURCE: Reuters