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Statoil empties Baku office

2 September 2015 14:39 (UTC+04:00)
Statoil empties Baku office

By Gulgiz Dadashova

Statoil, a leading Norwegian energy company in oil and gas production, is leaving Azerbaijan’s energy sector.

A source in Statoil Azerbaijan told APA that company’s Baku office recently announced job cuts.

"If the company had earlier about 40 employees, then now only 10-12 people work for the company. The Baku office of the company is completely closed. The department of public relations and other departments were closed,” the source said, adding that only senior officials and employees of the accounting department remained in the office.

Statoil came to the Azerbaijani market in 1992 and was a member of a number of major energy projects. In 2014, Statoil sold its shares in Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field, as well as the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), to SOCAR, BP and Malaysia's Petronas.

Later, Statoil has decided to sell its 20% share in the Trans Adriatic gas pipeline project, which is 870 km (545 miles) and carries 16 billion m3 of gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. Negotiations are underway for the sale of the stake to the Malaysian Petronas. The cost of the operation is not yet known.

The TAP pipeline is a part of project that is designed to transport 16 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea, one of the world’s largest gas fields, by the end of the decade. The 870 kilometre (545 mile) pipeline will connect with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) near the Turkish-Greek border at Kipoi, cross Greece and Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before reaching southern Italy.

TAP's current shareholding is BP (20 percent), the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) (20 percent), Norway's Statoil (20 percent), Belgium's Fluxys (19 percent), Spain's Enagas (16 percent) and Swiss company Axpo (5 percent).

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