Why did Rosneft President visit Baku?

Ilham Shaban, head of Oil Studies Centre Caspian Barrel, has drawn attention to the level of secrecy of the talks held yesterday. “There was no open information about that, mass media just published a short official statement about discussion of joint projects between Rosneft and SOCAR.”

Meanwhile, he believes that only this small detail shows importance of the meeting.

“At the meeting with Azerbaijani President, Igor Sechin has taken out a big file out of his brief case. This show that this time Rosneft President has arrived in Baku with very concrete proposals and submitted the projects of operation of two joint ventures to Azerbaijani President,” he said and added that Rosneft is interested in cooperation with SOCAR for several reasons.

“In particular, at present Rosneft has many licenses for development of shelf fields, but he has problems with them, because of the ban on delivery of high technology equipment required for that to Russia. Meanwhile, SOCAR is able to perform a wide range of works on the shelf, including horizontal and down-the-hole drilling, applying used western technologies. The same could be said about SOCAR’s drilling rig, which could be easily used in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea,” Shaban said.

He believes that SOCAR could give some projects to the Russian partners within the framework of a joint venture. “There are several projects, which SOCAR could submit for development.—0-