Last week the Italian concern ENI publicized the statistic data, which reports that Azerbaijan enters the list of 20 world countries for its huge oil reserves. With 7 billion barrels of oil reserves Azerbaijan ranks 18th in the rating list. According to ENI, oil reserves of Azerbaijan have grown almost 6 time since 1993, when they comprised only 1.2bn barrels.
Rich oil reserves makes Azerbaijan too attractive for the foreign investors. The administrator of the US International Agency for Development for Europe and Eurasia, Kent Hill stated earlier that tremendous oil and gas resources of the Caspian region assume special significance for the United States. The oil reserves of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, taken together, only less yield to US oil reserves.
According to ENI, Azerbaijan takes the second among the Central Asian countries after Kazakhstan for the volume of oil reserves, with 9 billion barrels of oil. The reserves of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan are estimated to 0,594 billion barrels, 0,546 billion barrels and 0.40 billion barrels respectively. Azerbaijan is behind of Oman (5,506 billion barrels) and Angola 5,412 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia with approximately 262 billion barrels of oil tops the list of ENI.
As to natural gas reserves, according to ENI, from 1993 to 2005 Azerbaijan has increased the appraisal of natural gas reserves 52% to 1.37 trillion cu m. Thus, in 1993 gas reserves were estimated to 900 billion cu m, whereas 12 years later in 2005 the figure attained 1.37 trillion cu m. However, the current estimation of fuel reserves have not been considered since 2000.
High rating of Azerbaijan for the oil and gas reserves makes the country as the second after the Netherlands, where the Turkish investors aspire to with regard to save the savings from domestic crisis. The report covering a trend of capital investments for the past 5 years notes that total amount of capital investments by the Turkish entrepreneurs in the Azerbaijani economy comprised $1,891bn. Major part of the Turkish capital in the Azerbaijani economy fell on energy sector ($1.8bn).