Azernews.Az

BAKU – Azerbaijan will double its gas production to 54 billion cubic meters per year by 2020, Deputy Energy Minister Natig Abbasov has said.

He said in Baku on Tuesday during a discussion of the EU-Azerbaijan memo on energy cooperation signed in 2006 that the gas volume will be enough to meet the needs of the Southern Corridor project, which envisions building a number of pipelines.

The Southern Corridor is a priority EU energy project diversifying supply routes and sources and increasing EU energy security. The corridor includes the Nabucco gas pipeline, Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), White Stream, and ITGI (Turkey-Greece-Italy pipeline).

Abbasov said that whereas Azerbaijan was producing 9bn cubic meters per year in 2006, and was also importing gas to meet its domestic demand, the country turned into a gas exporter in 2010.

"Azerbaijan’s gas output reached 27bn cubic meters last year. We are now exporting gas to countries like Russia, Iran, Turkey and Georgia."

Georgette Lalis, a Director in the European Commission’s Directorate General of Enterprise and Industry, said Azerbaijan is the EU’s strategic partner, and energy cooperation is a priority in bilateral relations, which is indicated by the recent visit to Baku by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, and the declaration signed on the Southern Corridor project.

Azerbaijan’s proven gas reserves amount to 2.2 trillion cubic meters. Also, the Umid field, which has estimated reserves of 200 billion cubic meters of gas and 30-40 million tons of condensate, was discovered in 2010. Moreover, the South Caucasus republic possesses such prospective structures as Absheron, Nakhchivan and Babek.