Azerbaijan pushes gas production to supply Europe and get rich
Against a backdrop of collapsing EU gas prices, the continent is rushing to diversify its natural gas imports. So while Russian gas giant Gazprom has seen its revenue and market share in Europe plummet due to Western sanctions.
While Russia is busy trying to redirect exports to Asian consumers, Europe has ramped up gas imports from Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani gas supplies to Europe via the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) amounted to 2.9 billion cubic meters in the first quarter of 2023. While this makes Azerbaijan a relatively small supplier to the EU, the total volume supplied in 2023 is higher than in previous years. In 2021, Europe received 8 billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan, which rose to 11.4 billion cubic meters in 2022.
According to Caspiannews.com, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said his country is planning to increase supplies from around 12 bcm this year to around 20 bcm in 2027. In July 2022, the European Commission and Azerbaijan have established a strategic partnership in the energy sector by signing a memorandum of understanding. Under the provisions of this memorandum, Azerbaijan pledged to double its gas exports to the European Union. In the memorandum of understanding, the two sides also addressed the issue of renewable energies, in particular wind energy and green hydrogen. The EU believes that Azerbaijan can become a strategic partner for renewable energy in the long term, while in the short term it will enhance its role as a supplier of natural gas.
In order to be able to supply the additional volumes, Azerbaijan is relying heavily on its fields of Shah Deniz and Absheron, the former of which will produce about 25 bcm of natural gas in 2022 and 36 million barrels of condensate in 2022. The real breakthrough for the Azerbaijan is the Absheron field, which is 50/50 owned by TotalEnergies and SOCAR. First commercial production from the Absheron field is expected to begin this year at a rate of about 1.5 bcm a year, which is expected to increase to about 90,000 boepd, or about 5.1 bcm a year in 2027.
In the graph: planned production of Absheron
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The article Azerbaijan pushes gas production to supply Europe and get rich comes from Scenarios Economics .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/lazerbaigian-spinge-la-produzione-di-gas-per-fornire-leuropa-e-arricchirsi/ on Fri, 26 May 2023 09:00:43 +0000.