Armenian lobbyists of all sorts and calibers are desperately promoting this narrative today, with the new round of information war triggered by Azerbaijani environmental activists’ campaign. The notorious Lindsay Snell is outraged: “Gazprom supplies gas to Azerbaijan who sends it to the EU!” On December 26, she also blasted on social media: oh, Russia has “doubled” gas deliveries to Azerbaijan!
But what is the reality? In his conversation with journalists the President called this narrative “information manipulation” and reminded: “… It was the former Chancellor of Germany and former head of one of the Russian energy companies, Mr. Schröder, who first said this. Afterwards this theory started circulating in the press and, naturally, our opponents happily picked it up and tried to accuse us of playing some dirty game.” Then he suggested that they should at least look at the export figures.
In fact, Azerbaijan has agreed to purchase 1 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia The contract was signed at the end of last year, but we have yet to receive even half of that volume. Last year Azerbaijan actually imported 200-300 million cubic meters. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan exported 22 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe.
Was it these millions of cubic meters, which make up 1% of Azerbaijani gas exports at best, that, according to the “brilliant experts”, made the difference?
The picture for this year is also clear. Azerbaijan is expected to export 24 billion cubic meters and import the remainder of those 1 billion cubic meters from Russia, which makes 2-3% of exports at best.
Moreover, gas imports and exports have their own peculiarities. Gas is used not only to heat homes and not only as fuel for vehicles as an alternative to gasoline or diesel: it is also used as raw material in the production of many types of chemical products, including synthetic rubber and fertilizer such as urea. Moreover, gas is almost always “contracted” before it is even extracted, and usually for a long period of time. There are no large uncommitted volumes of gas on the market.
Of course, we could lament yet again that in the sixties and seventies, experts were university professors, in the eighties, subject specialists, in the nineties, journalists who wrote extensively and at length on this or that topic, and now it is “Cathy from Instagram”. But all of the above should be common knowledge not only among specialists, but even among “thematic bloggers”.
So what is all this squealing in the playground about? Did none of these people learn how to use a calculator on their phones? Don’t they bother to research the issue before they rant in the press and on social media?
Unfortunately, the authors of these bogus narratives are simply not interested in reality. This is a deliberate information war against our country.
Obviously, gas exports from Azerbaijan to the EU, or, more precisely, the importance that Europe attaches to Azerbaijani gas deliveries, have upset many people’s plans. Azerbaijan substantially replenishes its treasury from export revenues, laying a solid economic foundation for its relations with the EU and clearly claiming to be an “energy corridor” for the countries of Central Asia as well.
And too many, including Gazprom, which loses income and monopoly status, not to mention Armenia, are not happy about this. This is why there are attacks on Azerbaijani oil and gas projects.
A variety of contexts have been used for these attacks over the years. At the very beginning of the “third oil boom”, experts, mostly from Russia, earnestly argued that Azerbaijan had no “serious” oil. It went so far that all references to Azerbaijani oil and even the famous footage of Hitler being served a cake with Baku on it were removed from Roman Karmen’s epic series The Unknown War in Russia. Then they said that Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline would never be built, because it was “not a viable political project”. At the start of the major gas exports, the “Gazprom lobby” in Germany, headed by Schröder, got involved. If in the nineties the Armenian lobby was screeching, “How can you buy Azerbaijani oil, forgetting about the blood of Armenians?!!”, this time it was German human rights activists who were shrieking, “How can you buy gas from Azerbaijan, where human rights are violated?” And some Azerbaijani political émigrés put on a show in Strasbourg, urging to buy gas… from Russia. There were Russian diplomats in the audience.
And now they are trying to “inflate and dilute” the 200-300 million cubic meters of gas purchased from Russia to all of Azerbaijan’s exports. But, firstly, gas does not lend itself well to “dilution”: diluted, it simply does not burn. And secondly, most importantly, such manipulations with figures can impress only the most gullible public, but not informed decision makers.
And it is for a reason that Ilham Aliyev confidently states: “These attempts to constantly denigrate Azerbaijan and belittle our role, our significance are not new. I remember the time when they were saying the same thing, that Azerbaijan had no oil, that Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan would not be built, then they were saying that Azerbaijan had no gas, and they are saying it again now. Let them talk. We are doing our work and we are doing it successfully.”
Nurani
Translated from Minval.az
