Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

Leading international business and consultancy company The Business Year (TBY) held a business meeting with Christian Giudicelli, the General Manager of Total Azerbaijan, on Thursday to discuss the company's performance over the past years and the regional environment for the energy industry.

Total has held a long-time presence in the Azerbaijani energy sector, through its involvement in the Absheron and Shah Deniz offshore blocks.

"The energy potential in Azerbaijan represents around 10 percent of the global consumption of the EU," Giudicelli told TBY said in the meetying with Gulay Sultan, TBY Country Manager, and Zoran Lalvani, Country Editor.

Speaking about Total's recent natural gas discoveries, Giudicelli noted the company made a successful discovery in September 2011.

"This time we partnered with SOCAR, and in September 2011 we made a successful discovery. We believe there are around 5-10 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of potential reserves there. We issued a notice of discovery and its commerciality in June 2012, and we are launching studies on the first stage of the field's development. There will be growth for gas production from Azerbaijan in the 2020s, when other fields come online. The future of the Azerbaijani gas sector has to be looked at from a long-term perspective," he said.

The TBY team is in the process of conducting more than 150 face-to-face interviews with Azerbaijan's top decision makers to better understand and more accurately reflect the country's business sentiment.

The research will be published under the title The Business Year: Azerbaijan 2013, one of the most comprehensive reviews of the Azerbaijani economy published internationally. The target readership of the publication includes top executives, policy makers, and media representatives all around the world.

The initial demand for The Business Year: Azerbaijan 2013 reflects the deficit of business information on Azerbaijan.