BP and SOCAR have many unsolved issues

On November 2, 2013 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received Robert Dudley, Executive Director of BP company.

Aliyev and Dudley have discussed the current state of bilateral cooperation and its perspectives.

The official sources did not provide any additional information about the meeting. BP-Azerbaijan company told Turan that the working visit has been planned in advance. The company’s press office said it has no information available about the issues discussed at the meeting. 

It is not hard to guess that BP’s joining the trans-Anadolu gas pipeline (TANAP) and authorization of the Shah-Deniz-2 project in December 2013 were the main issues discussed by the sides. 

In October 2012 BP, Statoil and Total submitted to SOCAR their proposals on the project and expressed a desire to obtain 12%, 12% and 5% shares, respectively. However, a year later SOCAR and the companies have not signed the commercial agreement on joining TANAP. 

“If there is any vagueness left in the TANAP project, the project will be hardly authorized in December 2013. The extracting companies need a clear picture of the future profit,” representative of one of the Shah-Deniz project-partners told Turan.  He said “SOCAR and the operator still have many unsolved issues.

According to Turan, during the visit to Baku BP President failed to solve commercial or strategic issues.  The experts of SOCAR and BP will start new talks in the coming days.

Turan’s correspondent found out that BP Group President has left Baku on the same day.—0—