A working meeting between Chairman of the Board of the Public Joint-Stock Company Gazprom Alexey Miller and Rovnag Abdullayev, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), was
held
in St. Petersburg on July 2.
Meeting participants discussed cooperation issues, in particular supplies of natural gas to Azerbaijan.
According to the
head of the Center for Petroleum Studies of Caspian Barrel
Ilham Shaban, “Official representatives of SOCAR have not commented on this visit yet, and there is no information pertaining to this on website of the State Oil Company. However, based on information from the Russian side, it can be assumed that the initiative of this meeting came from SOCAR, as it was announced that “at the meeting, the question of Gazprom delivering gas to Azerbaijan was raised”.
He also noted that BP is going to stop operations of the Shah Deniz-1 production platform for several weeks in August. Therefore, it is possible that during this period Azerbaijan will have to import gas for its own needs, Ilham Shaban said.
According to him, another reason for buying Russian gas may be a methanol plant in Azerbaijan which expands production in winter, and thus additional gas supplies may be required to ensure the stable production of methanol.
