In his speech he said that Azerbaijan plays an important role in ensuring energy security of a number of countries today.
“This was not the case in the first years of our independence”, said the President.
According to him, the demand for Azerbaijani gas has increased dramatically.
“The Southern Gas Corridor is already operational, now we need to work on building new bridges, new connections, interconnectors, and expanding our presence in the European gas market. As of today, June 1, the situation is quite different. The demand for Azerbaijani gas has increased dramatically, and of course we need to take this into account.
“But at the same time, our potential consumers must understand that it is impossible to produce large volumes of gas in one year, contracts are needed, we need to start and speed up negotiations. We need to work with our traditional partners, the energy companies, to ramp up production and expand our existing infrastructure. This is something we did not plan for in the next few years. The Southern Gas Corridor is an integrated gas transportation system. The capacity of its last segment, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, is 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year. And now we are thinking about increasing it, because there is a demand for it. But this will require time, significant costs, close coordination and cooperation, and an active dialogue with all the countries involved. We are ready for this. The Minister of Energy and SOCAR have already received my instructions, and we are in the process of active negotiations”, the President stressed.
