bp, as the operating company under the risk service agreement related to the development of the Karabagh field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea, announces that as part of its work programme the draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) document for Karabagh project seismic survey programme has been produced and published on behalf of the contractor parties. 

The project seismic survey programme involves Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) seismic survey, and High-Resolution (HR) / Ultra-High Resolution (UHR) seismic survey. The OBN survey is scheduled to begin in December 2025 and will last up to 3.5 months. The HR/UHR survey is planned for March–April 2026, with a duration of up to 45 days. 

The Karabagh structure is located along the North Absheron trend, 125 km east of Baku and 20 km from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) complex. Water depth at the structure ranges from 160 m to 225 m. Prior to the commencement of large-scale exploration activities by the foreign consortium CIPCO, Soviet-era estimates indicated that the structure contained over 100 million tons of oil and 60 billion cubic meters of gas. Under the Karabagh exploration and development contract, signed in 1995, engineering-geological studies and marine seismic surveys were carried out in 1997. The first exploration well was drilled, and geophysical studies conducted at the well confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons in the Nadkirmakin sandstone formation. Further exploration revealed that the field contained a relatively small volume of gas (approximately 30 billion cubic meters) and around 25 million tons of oil, which were non-commercial at that time, leading to the closure of the project.

Today, due to the well-developed production and export infrastructure in the Azerbaijani sector, as well as the high likelihood of discovering commercial gas reserves at a relatively shallow depth compared with Shah Deniz, the Karabagh project has a high chance of receiving a ‘second life.’