Azerbaijan is about to become a major player in the world oil and gas markets and stands to bring in $140 billion over the next 20 years, the country`s president said on Tuesday at the opening ceremony of the 13th annual Caspian Oil and Gas Conference.
Against the backdrop of the recent inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which brings oil and gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey`s Mediterranean coast via Georgia, President Ilham Aliyev stressed that the state oil fund is increasing its potential every year.
\'Azerbaijan`s long term development will be positive,\' Aliyev told the audience of conference exhibitors, diplomats and journalists.
\'Interest in Azerbaijan is rising very rapidly,\' he continued, adding that the country is undergoing political and economic reforms and that its investment policies are \'very open.\'
\'We want to modernize and enrich our country, and we have all the opportunity to do it,\' Aliyev said.
Aliyev came to power in 2003 after elections that were criticized by the international community. He took over for his father, Heydar, who suffered a massive and eventually fatal stroke.
Both U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Aliyev, in letters read at the conference opening ceremonies, to support democracy.
\'It`s an exciting time to be in Azerbaijan, as the planning of the last decade comes to fruition,\' Britain`s ambassador to the country, Lawrence Bristow, said in a speech at the opening ceremonies.
The 1,056-mile BTC pipeline is the second-longest energy pipeline in the world, after a trans-Siberia line in Russia.
It turns Turkey into an important energy corridor from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and in turn presents a similar opportunity to establish an energy corridor from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through an existing pipeline from Ashkelon, Israel to Eilat, Israel. It is seen as key by the West because it bypasses Russian territory, until now the major supplier of gas to Europe.
Israel`s minister of national infrastructures, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, was on hand for the conference with a delegation of advisers, Israeli businessmen and journalists.
\'Israel is 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) from Baku but less than 600 kilometers (373 miles) south of Ceyhan,\' Ben-Eliezer said in his speech at the conference`s opening ceremonies. He cited the proximity as a good reason to establish a corridor through Israel, rather than through the small and expensive Suez Canal or around Africa to the Far East.
\'The Eilat-Askelon pipeline has important storage potential,\' Ben-Eliezer said.
The Israeli minister said that by 2025, 50 percent of Israel`s energy would be supplied by natural gas, another reason his country is so interested in using the pipeline for Azerbaijani oil and gas products.
Hundreds of energy companies set up exhibition booths in three pavilions of a sports complex in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, for the gathering, which according to conference materials, also \'(incorporates) refining and petrochemicals.\'
On hand were representatives from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, as well as Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom.
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