Azernews.Az

BAKU – BP Azerbaijan has no intention to sell out its stake in the energy projects in Azerbaijan, the company’s president has said, following Russian gas monopoly Gazprom’s statement that it was ready to buy the oil giant’s stake in the Shahdaniz field in the Caspian Sea.

"On the contrary, if a proposal is made on a new stake in Shahdaniz, the company is ready to purchase it any time," Rashid Javanshir told the Baku-based ANS TV channel, following Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller’s statement, which came during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Baku last week.

BP, the top foreign investor in Azerbaijan’s energy sector, holds 25.5% participating interest in the Shahdaniz gas field it operates.

"I am not going to respond to someone’s views," Javanshir said. "But I can say on behalf of our company that BP never had and will not have any plans to sell any stakes in Azerbaijan – neither in the past, nor now or in the future. On the contrary, as I said, we want to expand our operations. If someone offers us an additional stake in Shahdaniz, we would be delighted to buy it."

Javanshir said he could not elaborate on the issue any further.

"Our real operations and the brunt of responsibility we bear stem from our bonds with Azerbaijan," he added.

Speculations about BP’s plan to sell its shares in Azerbaijani projects emerged after projections suggested that the company would be hit by losses worth a staggering $60 billion in the aftermath of the devastating oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Later, BP signed a new 30-year production sharing agreement with Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR affirming its commitment to oil and gas projects in the resource-rich Caspian state.

Besides Shahdaniz, BP Azerbaijan is involved in the projects on developing the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) Caspian oil fields, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) main export pipeline and the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), a section of a major conduit transporting Shahdaniz gas.