Today's successful oil and gas projects of Azerbaijan are associated with the country's President Ilham Aliyev, president of the International Petroleum Club, chairman of the Baku Nobel Heritage Fund, president of the National Nobel Heritage Fund, senior UN expert on global energy issues, Togrul Bagirov, said in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza.
He recalled that all these projects - the Southern Gas Corridor, Shah Deniz-2, TANAP and TAP - were proposed long time ago and are a result of unique oil strategy that was implemented by national leader Heydar Aliyev.
"But today's successes of Azerbaijan are associated with Ilham Aliyev. Extraordinary professional approach, based on close mutual cooperation with large companies, with countries of Europe, with neighboring countries, all of this helps Azerbaijan to implement projects without any problems," Togrul Bagirov said.
He added that all these projects should be viewed from commercial point of view, they're nor connected to politics or geopolitics. "Another thing is that oil and gas aren't just economic concepts. Places with oil and gas have serious concentration of interests, sometimes mutually exclusive, but sometimes friendly, pretty peaceful. I believe that Azerbaijan is beginning to play a very significant role in ensuring energy security, particularly in Europe, and this is good."
"At the same time, Azerbaijan is not a rival of other countries, other energy suppliers, but more of an accompaniment. After all, 10 or even 30 billion cubic meters of gas is a small amount that can't be considered an alternative, much less a substitute. That's why we must cooperate," he stressed.
