Statoil Azerbaijan, a subsidiary of Equinor (former Statoil), has reached an agreement with Azerbaijan's state-held oil and gas company SOCAR for the development of the Karabagh offshore oil field and has signed a production sharing agreement (PSA) for the Ashrafi, Dan Ulduzu, Aypara area off the Azerbaijan coast. The Karabagh asset is located in the neighbourhood of SOCAR's Shallow Water Gunashli (SWG) and BP's Azeri Chirag Gunashli (ACG) fields. To operate the field, SOCAR and Equinor will set up a 50-50 joint venture. The transactions are subject to regulatory approvals and conditions and the final investment decisions (FIDs) will be taken after the appraisal and engineering works.
Equinor entered Azerbaijan in 1992 and holds a 7.27% stake in the BP operated Azeri Chirag Gunashli (ACG) oil field and an 8.71% interest in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline exporting ACG oil. In 2017, its 2017 average equity production stood at 50,300 boe/d.