Yesterday, St. Petersburg hosted a working meeting between the chairman of the board of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, and the president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Rovnag Abdullayev.
"The participants of the meeting discussed the current state of bilateral cooperation in the gas sphere. Special attention was paid to the issue of exports of Russian gas to Azerbaijan. In particular, they considered the possibility of increasing the supply, taking into account the prospects for growth in natural gas consumption in the country," the statement says, TASS reports.
Within the framework of swap operations, in accordance with a prior agreement between SOCAR and Gazprom, the volume of deliveries will amount to about 2 billion cubic meters of gas per year (about 10 million cubic meters daily). In the future, this gas will be used to supply the southern regions of Russia, the head of SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev said previously.
"Thus, in the current and next years we will check the peak capacities of our gas storage facilities. Starting from 2017 we will start providing gas supply to the North Caucasus region of Russia" the head of SOCAR said, Trend reports.
The negotiations between SOCAR and Gazprom are currently continuing. "Now we are developing the technical details of the contract, but when exactly it will be signed is not known yet. The Russian gas will be supplied in order to pump it into the underground gas storage facilities of Azerbaijan, in order to use them in their full capacity," Abdullayev said.
Almost a quarter of all the gas produced from the block of fields 'Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli' (ACG) is pumped back into the reservoir to maintain pressure.
But over the past two years Azerbaijan has greatly increased gas consumption.
"In recent years Azerbaijan has actively expanded the gas supply network, and its level now exceeds 90%. This leads to an increase in demand for gas. Therefore, we have redirected those volumes of gas, which were supplied to Russia, to the domestic market," Abdullayev said earlier.
