SOCAR allowed Gasprom to deliver gas to Azerbaijan using its infrastructure

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has allowed Russian Gasprom to deliver gas to the methanol plant of Azerbaijani AzMeCo company, SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists on Tuesday.

“We have signed the contract and committed ourselves to deliver gas to the methanol plant via our gas pipelines. We do not have need in gas import, we just honor our contract commitments. The methanol plant has not concluded a long-term contract for gas deliveries with us and for this reason we do not have resources for it. Thus, SOCAR did not object to purchase of gas by AzMeCo from the Russian company. We have concluded a contract allowing Russian gas deliveries via our pipelines,” Abdullayev said.

In June 2015 Aleksei Miller, head of Russian Gasprom company, said that Gasprom will be able to deliver several billion cub.m. of gas a year to Azerbaijan since the end of 2015.

At present Gasprom has a contract for Azerbaijani gas purchase (with the possibility of prolongation) signed on October 14, 2009. The contract expires at the end of December 2015. However, since summer 2014 SOCAR does not deliver gas to Russia. In 2013 Azerbaijani gas export to Russia totaled 1.37 billion cub.m., last year it decreased to 0.2 billion cub.m. The reason is launching of the methanol plant last year, which runs only on natural gas.

* The length of the gas pipeline from the Russian-Azerbaijani border to AzMeCo plant is about 250 km. The carrying capacity of the pipeline is 6 billion cub.m. a year and the current working capacity is no more than 2.5 billion cub.m.—0--