Azerbaijan’s energy minister, Parviz Shahbazov, welcomed the peace deal that marked the ending of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Shahbazov said the end of the conflict would be good news for the region’s energy security. He added that Azerbaijan’s energy export pipelines had become attack targets during the conflict that claimed thousands of lives.
BP, the largest foreign energy investor in Azerbaijan, said that it was deeply concerned after a reported rocket attack on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in early October. Shahbazov said that several other pipelines, including the South Caucasus Pipeline, had been targeted, although none of them caused any supply disruptions.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline ships 620,000 bpd of crude during the first half of this year. Meanwhile, the new Southern Corridor will expand Azerbaijan’s gas exports by 16 Bcm/year. BP said that the final portion of the Southern Corridor was ‘mechanically complete.”
