SOCAR is the leader in shelf deposits, Stanislav Pritchin says

Political analyst Stanislav Pritchin believes that SOCAR is the leader in terms of technology in the CIS for the development of offshore fields. According to the analyst, the cooperation between SOCAR and Rosneft offers great prospects; however, these are not the only areas of cooperation where Russia and Azerbaijan will be able to carry out productive work.

"Rosneft's interest in cooperating with SOCAR, I think, in the future will not be limited to the use of the infrastructure and extensive supply network of products which exist in SOCAR," he says.  "We still need to talk about the fact that SOCAR is probably the leader of the former Soviet Union in terms of technology for the development of offshore fields due to many years of cooperation with BP and independent operating time that is present."

"The company itself is developing several large fields in the Caspian Sea. Given that Rosneft is the largest Russian company which will primarily develop Arctic resources, unfortunately, to date, the company has no independent capacity or independent technology for the development of offshore resources, and therefore, I believe that the cooperation with SOCAR is one of the promising areas, particularly in the field of underwater drilling and development of subsea fields. If we talk about economic cooperation, some time ago there was information that the Oil Fund of Azerbaijan in the framework of risk diversification is investing its resources in development projects in Russia, which is also an indication that for the Azerbaijan Oil Fund, which accumulates the main profit from the production of oil and gas, the Russian economy is quite interesting and stable, from the point of view of Baku, in diversifying their financial risks. If we make a brief analysis of bilateral trade, it should be noted that, against the background of the growth of bilateral trade, Russia's exports to Azerbaijan are, above all, highly-processed goods. They are less prone to some economic crises. For Russia this is very important. If we abstract from oil exports, Russia is Azerbaijan's main trading partner, according to this indicator, if we talk about purely commercial non-commodity transactions. In this regard, I think there are some prospects for cooperation. High dynamics of cooperation are observed in the military-technical sphere. Here we see mutual interest, resources, independent weapons programs and cooperation with the Russian military-industrial complex, which is one of the most dynamic sectors of our economy. We can assume that this is also one of the areas for future cooperation," Stanislav Pritchin believes.