Russia’s energy company Gazprom will continue to purchase gas from Azerbaijan. “The purchase of gas will be carried out in accordance with the previous agreements and the contract in force,” Gazprom said.
Earlier, the deputy chairman of the Gazprom board, Alexander Medvedev, addressing Investors Day in Hong Kong, said the company doesn’t need gas supplies from abroad and in 2015 plans to reduce gas purchases from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan by almost 10 billion cubic meters, replacing them with its own gas.“
Following the investments in both the production complex and the transport complex, Gazprom has no technological need of gas purchases abroad, regardless of the source. Gazprom is able to provide both the market needs in any region of Russia, and the delivery of gas to our customers in Europe, and in the future in Asia, through its own resources,” he stressed.
Gazprom said total gas exports in all directions in 2014 amounted to 147.2 billion cubic meters. In 2013, this figure was 217.7 billion cubic meters.
Azerbaijan’s gas is supplied to Russia under a gas purchase and sale contract (with possibility of extension) signed by Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) and Gazprom in Baku on October 14, 2009. The contract makes it possible to suspend and resume gas supplies at any time.
In 2014, SOCAR exported 207 million cubic meters of gas to Russia versus 1.37 billion cubic meters in 2013, Tend reports. The source said the reduction in the volume of gas supplies to Russia has objective reasons that are associated with the creation of a new road and transport infrastructure, as well as the repair works on the gas pipeline.
According to another source at SOCAR, the company currently has no plans to resume gas exports to Russia. This is explained by the fact that the construction of the remaining section of the ‘Baku-Guba-Russian border’ road has not yet been completed. Aside from that, technical work on the gas transport infrastructure is continuing.
