Associated Press Worldstream
January 12, 2008 Saturday 3:28 PM GMT

Reports: Azerbaijani oil fields yield 30 percent more oil in 2007
than previous year

BAKU Azerbaijan

President Ilham Aliev said Azerbaijani oil fields yielded more than
30 percent more oil last year than in 2006, state-run newspapers
reported Saturday.

Aliev also told a Cabinet meeting Friday that the Caspian Sea
nation’s economy grew a torrid 25 percent in 2007 and that the
government planned to continue increasing budget expenditures which
grew 10-fold over the past four years.

"Now we know the financial resources that we will garner from the
sale of oil, natural gas, from our economic development, from
industrial development," he was quoted as saying.

The ex-Soviet republic’s off-shore oil and gas fields are some of the
largest in the former Soviet Union and the West is eagerly trying to
increase exports of those energy resources for Western markets. With
major oil companies like BP PLC
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leading drilling and pipeline projects, oil production has increased
markedly and Azerbaijan’s government has seen huge revenue increases.

Government newspapers quoted Aliev as saying that 42 million tons of
oil (6 million barrels) were extracted in 2007 from the country’s
fields, mostly from the massive Shah Deniz field, which is being
developed by a BP-led consortium. The compares with 4.6 million
barrels in 2006.

Azerbaijan has also noticeably increase spending to upgrade its armed
forces. Some analysts fear this could spark an arms race with
neighboring enemy Armenia and lead to renewed fighting in particular
over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.