Azerbaijani Oil Leader Expects $50bn Foreign Direct Investment

The First Deputy President of SOCAR, the state oil group of the Azerbaijani Republic, said yesterday that “We do not believe that the withdrawal of some firms from oil projects could decisively undermine the exploitation of the Caspian Sea's natural resources. Business is business, and in taking decisions every participant is guided by its own understanding,” Ilham Aliyev told the Izvestiya-Azerbaijan newspaper. Given the successful implementation of all agreements; the country has a total of twenty one agreements with foreign oil groups at present; the envisaged level of investments will amount to fifty billion dollars, Aliyev added. At present about five billion dollars has already been ploughed into the oil production. About two and a half billion dollars will be invested in the construction of the main export oil pipeline and another billion dollars will be spent on the construction of the Baku-Erzurum gas pipeline. In case of the successful prospecting of the contractual structures, the process of further investment will not take long. Therefore, the approximate sum of fifty billion dollars will be corrected depending on circumstances, Aliyev said.