Azerbaijan, Baku, June 4 / Trend , E. Ismayilov/
About 8 billion cubic meters of the 27 billion cubic meters to be produced in Azerbaijan this year will be exported, SOCAR Vice president for Investments and Marketing Elshad Nasirov said at a conference Oil&Gas 2009 in Baku.
Azerbaijan exports gas via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Azerbaijan-Georgia pipeline and also to Iran in exchange for Iran's supply to Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
Nasirov said Azerbaijan's oil output will double due to realization of Shah Deniz II, development of other perspective fields and gas production from Azer-Chiraq-Gunashli fields and associated gas obtained from these fields.
Use of any transport corridor given benefits for the producer country is one of the basic principles of transport of Azerbaijani natural gas, Nasirov said.
Today options for the transit of Azerbaijani gas via Russia are examined today, but most of the expected routes of transport envisage transit via Turkey, SOCAR vice-president said.
Currently, each of the three proposed options for transportation of gas, such as "Nabucco", ITGI and TAP are studied in terms of commercial profitability. The negotiation should take into account the interests of producer country as well as transit countries and consumers.
Negotiations are underway to reach a transit agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkey. "Negotiations have intensified [...], the successful completion of the process is not so far," Nasirov said.
Success lies in the fact that Turkey would not interfere with the decision on choice of transport routes and destination of delivery. Also, Azerbaijan and Turkey have reached progress in negotiations on gas prices as a part of Shah Deniz I, he said.
Proposals to obtain all volumes of gas as a part of Shah Deniz II come from all neighboring countries, including Iran, which also offered good prices for gas, he said.
Negotiations with Russia are not limited to small volumes in the "swap" supply, which is scheduled to begin in 2010. The subject of the negotiations is a large amount of gas both from Shah Deniz and other fields of Azerbaijan, Nasirov said.