Financial Times: Azerbaijan is offended by the European Union over gas

Azerbaijan accused the EU authorities of treating the country as a gas supplier like a firefighter. The EU needs volumes for a short period of time, while Azerbaijan needs long-term contracts to invest in production growth. In Brussels, they retort, they say, companies decide.

"Baku needed long-term contracts to attract the financing needed to increase gas production in the Caspian Sea and meet additional EU demand," writes The Financial Times, citing Azerbaijani Ambassador to the EU Vagif Sadigov.

"We cannot be firefighters who just turn on the gas for three to six months,— Vagif Sadykov told the newspaper. "We need contracts so that we can apply to banks for financing drilling in the Caspian Sea."

The Financial Times noted that in 2022, Brussels and Baku has signed a deal to increase Azerbaijan's annual gas exports to the EU by almost half to 20 billion cubic meters by 2027. So The EU wanted to abandon Russian fuel.

As a result, despite "in-depth discussions" with the European Commission on how to achieve this goal, operators The EU is reluctant to sign long-term contracts because of the bloc's ambitions to limit fossil fuel consumption and achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Sadykov noted.

Officials The EU told the publication in response that commercial agreements should be concluded by companies, not national governments.

"In order to finance this (production growth), there must be confidence that in the future there will be customers in Europe, and with sides The EU has doubts about whether it is worth supporting any long-term gas purchase and sale agreements," Matthew Bryza, managing director of Straife and former US Ambassador to Azerbaijan, told The Financial Times.

As reported by EADaily , earlier about the requests The EU will resell Azerbaijani gas to it, and increase the consumption of Russian gas themselves, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.

"I need this guarantee from you — 10 years, 15 years, whatever it is, you need to give something," Alparslan Bayraktar said.