OREANDA-NEWS. February 04, 2011.  In January 2011 the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) increased drilling by 46.4% against last December.

Drilling operations of 2011 are already  equivalent  to 7.9% of drilling for 2010 (136.324 m).

SOCAR informs that if not to take into account drilling operations by joint ventures (JVs) and operating companies (OCs) it was drilled 10.786 m in January versus 7,369 m in December and 12,890 m in February(last year’s best index), and 17,399 m in April of 2009 (the latest years’ best index) . Drilling for 2010 totaled 136.324 m against 168,182 m for 2009 and 202,954 m for 2008.

At that, in January development drilling made up 103.73 and exploration drilling 413 m (with full lack of wildcat drilling) versus 7,169 m and  200 m respectively (with full lack of wildcat drilling) in December 2010. The best index of exploration drilling in 2009 was registered in October (2,699 m).

In 2010, development drilling totaled 127,858 m, exploration drilling 8,466 m and wildcat drilling 1,785 versus 160,326 m of development and 7,856 m of exploration drilling in 2009.

According to SOCAR’ s President Rovnag Abdullayev in 2011 the company is planning drilling works for 200.000 m, and the plan has already been realized by 5.4%.