SOCAR: Azerbaijan counts on Gasprom’s gas to maintain oil production

Purchase of gas in Russia could help Azerbaijan to maintain oil production in the country, because Azerbaijan uses more gas to pump into the bed to increase oil production, Rovnag Abdullayev, President of State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), told journalists during the IP Week conference in London.

“We need additional gas to pump it into the bed to increase oil production. We have been working on it. We have possibilities, many power stations running on black oil, which is much cheaper, than gas now. We are very interested. We have offered our proposals to Gasprom and we are waiting for the response. We said that we can receive any volume. We have a possibility to pump up to 3-4 billion of additional gas into the beds. We have no problems with prices, we buy gas on the basis of the formula,” said SOCAR President.

Gasprom delivered gas to Azerbaijan from 2000 till 2006. Azerbaijan refused to import gas from Russia, because of launching of the Shah Deniz field and since 2010 it started selling gas to Russia. In 2013 and 2014 Azerbaijani gas deliveries to Gasprom were repeatedly suspended, because of the repairs. In 2015 there were attempts to start Russian gas deliveries to the Azerbaijan methanol plant (AzMeCo). As a result only 100 mcm has been delivered.—0—