Aleksei Miller: Azerbaijan asks Gasprom to resume gas deliveries

Azerbaijan has requested Gasprom to start gas deliveries and they could begin this year and total several billion cub.m. a year, Gasprom President Aleksei Miller said at a press conference on June 26, 2015.

“Azerbaijan’s economy grows and its local demand goes up. We mean beginning of delivery of several billion cub.m. of gas a year on the basis of the long-term contract. The deliveries could begin till the end of this year,” he added.

Miller also reminded that the contract of Azerbaijani gas deliveries to Russia is effective till the end of this year, but the deliveries have been suspended. “The deliveries have been suspended since the mid of last year,” added Miller.

Turan reported quoting RIA Novosti that Gasprom and State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) have signed the Azerbaijani gas purchase-sale contract in 2009. The deliveries started in 2010. The addendum to the contract has signed in 2012.

In 2013 1.37 billion cub.m. of Azerbaijani gas was delivered to Russia, in 2014 the volume of deliveries dropped to 0.21 billion cub.m. There have been no deliveries in 2015.

* Azerbaijan has first started Russian gas import in October 2000. Russian gas import continued till the end of 2006 when Azerbaijan started development of the biggest gas field in the Caspian Sea – Shah Deniz. It is unknown why Azerbaijan has decided to resume the Russian gas deliveries, because SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev has recently said that Azerbaijan has no problems with satisfying its needs in gas. SOCAR press office has refuted the idea of Russian gas import into the country. SOCAR press office and SOCAR President admitted gas import for the private company AzMeCo (methanol plant). According to the statistics, every day the volume of tank gas in the country grows and during five months this year it has increased by more than 11.5% (8,476,600,000 cub.m.) –0--