Equinor Inks RSA, Fortifies Foothold In Azerbaijan

Equinor ASA EQNR associate company — Statoil Azerbaijan — has inked a Risk Service Agreement (RSA) with Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR. The agreement includes the appraisal and development of the Karabagh oilfield.

The parties have also signed a Production Sharing Agreement for the Ashrafi, Dan Ulduzu, Aypara area. The exploration area is situated about 100-110 kilometers north-east of Baku.

The Karabagh oilfield, located 120 kilometers east of Baku, is in close proximity to the SOCAR operated Shallow Water Gunashli field and the BP plc BP operated Azeri Chirag Gunashli ("ACG") field. Statoil Azerbaijan holds an interest of 7.27% in ACG field.

Statoil Azerbaijan and SOCAR will form a 50-50 joint venture to operate the licenses. Subsequent to appraisal and engineering work, a final investment decision on field development will be taken.

These deals strengthen Equinor's position in the region and augment its prospects. The company has been present in Baku since 1992 and is one of the largest foreign investors in the country. In 2017, Equinor's average equity production was 50,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The company changed its name to Equinor from Statoil as they wanted to remove oil from the name. This is a recent trend followed by many energy players, which is in sync with the global move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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