Skip to content

All the news that matters, in plain English.

Latest
  1. Hurricane Polo re-strengthens to Category 5, forecast to make landfall in Baja California Sur on Monday
  2. India delivers right of reply to Shehbaz Sharif's UNGA speech — warns "terrorism by Pakistan will have consequences"
  3. Liverpool reappoint Julian Ward as sporting director after Hughes exits for Al-Hilal
  4. Magnitude 6.6 earthquake strikes Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia; no tsunami threat
  5. NYPD arrests two men seen emerging from New York City manhole near Upper East Side hotel
  6. Pro-Palestine Action group plans mass vigil at Labour conference in Liverpool
  7. Pentagon HR breach exposed unencrypted personal data of up to 4 million US military personnel
  8. SpaceX lines up Crew-13 and Falcon Heavy NROL-97 on a same-day Oct 1 doubleheader

Business

Azerbaijan signs $10bn-plus investment deals as Absheron gas field gets final go-ahead

Azerbaijan signed agreements worth more than $10 billion in potential investment at a Baku forum, as SOCAR, TotalEnergies and XRG took a final investment decision on the full-field development of the Absheron gas field.

By James Calloway · · 2 min read

Azerbaijan has signed agreements representing more than $10 billion in potential investment at an international forum in Baku, as the Caspian state lined up a series of major energy deals on Saturday.

State oil company SOCAR, France’s TotalEnergies and Abu Dhabi’s XRG reached a final investment decision on the full-field development of the Absheron gas and condensate field, one of the largest offshore fields in the Caspian Sea.

President Ilham Aliyev said the second phase of Absheron would increase Azerbaijan’s gas production by around 5 billion cubic metres within three to four years.

“Oil and gas will continue to dominate our economy and to generate wealth which will be reinvested,” Aliyev told the Azerbaijan International Investment Forum. He said the non-oil sector now accounted for more than 70% of GDP, while oil and gas still made up more than 90% of exports.

Azerbaijan exports gas mainly to Europe and Turkey, with about half of its 25 billion cubic metres of exports last year going to EU countries. Reuters noted that further growth in Azerbaijani exports to Europe would require additional pipeline capacity, even as disruptions to global energy supplies have heightened concerns over security of supply.

In a separate deal, SOCAR and US energy major ExxonMobil signed a production-sharing agreement for the exploration, development and production of unconventional hydrocarbon resources in Azerbaijan’s Middle Kura basin, with each company holding a 50% stake and ExxonMobil serving as operator.

Aliyev also said transit cargo volumes through the country were expected to reach 16 million metric tons this year, with a target of 25 million tons or more by 2030, and that the government was negotiating with unnamed international companies to develop data centres and AI in Azerbaijan.

Sources

More on this topic: all Business stories

Get Flip News by email

This opens your email app — we add you manually. No account, no spam, no third parties.