Azerbaijan will double gas supplies to Russia in 2010 to one billion cubic metres, the resource-rich Causasus republic's energy firm SOCAR said on Saturday. "In 2010 we will supply one billion cubic metres of gas to Russia," SOCAR's president Rovnag Abdullayev told journalists in Baku.
Last October SOCAR and Russia's gas giant Gazprom signed a contract to begin the pumping of 500 million cubic metres of gas annually to Russia as Moscow seeks to extend its grip on potential European energy supplies in the hydrocarbons-rich Caspian Sea. The agreement may ultimately deprive the European pipeline project Nabucco of a portion of gas from Azerbaijan.
From 2014 Nabucco, a rival of the Russian South Stream gas pipeline, must deliver gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Turkey to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian supplies. Under the contract, Gazprom's purchases of Azerbaijani gas will start on January 1.
The price for the gas will be agreed quarterly, based on global market rates. Rich in oil and gas and strategically located between Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan has been courted by both Moscow and the West since gaining its independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Backed by Western governments, companies such as Britain's BP have invested heavily in its energy sector, building a corridor of oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Turkey to Europe. Azerbaijan last year produced 22.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas, according to government figures, and it expects to nearly double gas production to 40 billion cubic metres by 2015-2020.