Azerbaijan can revise amounts of natural gas import from Russia and reduce them. Natik Aliyev, Minister of Energy and Industry of Azerbaijan, told Trend in hi exclusive interview that the countrys officials had recently held talks in Moscow, but neither the future price nor the amount of gas had been defined to date.
This year SOCAR is purchasing up to 5bn m3 of gas from Russia for $110/1k m3.
В"I think we will keep importing gas, depending on amounts. Next year it will not be necessary to purchase 4.5 to 5bn m3 of gas. It is more expedient to utilize internal capacitiesВ", he said.
Aliyev further said in view of boosting utilization of the countrys internal resources the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan had already been assigned to accelerate gas program.
Minister said identification of import amounts partially depends on the indices of fuel and energy balance of Azerbaijan. В"Upon its compilation we will know the amount of gas necessary to import in AzerbaijanВ", Aliyev indicated.
В"We cannot reduce gas consumption. Next year it will total 11bn m3. We should sum up all internal gas production resources and thus we will get a notion of the necessary amount of the gas to importВ", minister concluded.