Azerbaijan is an important partner of Statoil; the total amount of company` s investments to the country is $2, 4, Statoil executive director, Helge Lund told at the press-conference on May 3, Trend reports.
During my 2 day stay in Baku I was acquainted with the implementation of projects, in which we are involved. Region` s potential lies in implementation of these projects. Together with our partners we will try to implement Stage -2 of Shah Deniz project before 2012 or earlier, he said.
In the course the visit, Lund had important and interesting meetings with the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, industry and energy minister, Natik Aliyev, SOCAR head, Rovnag Abdullayev and BP Azerbaijan leadership.
We reached agreement that we should continue cooperating in frames of the Stage-2 of Shah-Deniz project, so we discussed perspectives of accelerating the project with our partners and the government, the director said.
Speaking about competition between Shah-Deniz and Gasprom in gas supplies, Lund said, that Europe as well as United States are in need of several energy suppliers.
As for Statoil` s interest in operatorship in a new and promising structure in Azerbaijani sector of Caspian Sea, Lund assured that Statoil is really ready to operate more structures in Azerbaijan.
And of course, we are evaluating new business opportunities in Azerbaijan. However, now we hold talks only at the general level without focusing on any particular structure in Azerbaijan, he concluded.
Statoil owns 8, 6% in Azeri-Chiraq-Guneshli (ASG), 25, 5% in Shahdeniz, 15% in Alov-Araz- Sharg. Statoil is an operator of gas supplies in Azerbaijan and it is responsible for gas sales in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. It also serves as a commercial operator of South- Caucasus pipeline company, owning 25, 5% of its assets. Statoil also has 8, 71% share in BTC project, designed to export Azerbaijani and Caspian oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia.