AZERBAIJANI OIL LOSES ITS IMPORTANCE, A WELL-KNOWN ENERGY EXPERT, PETROS TERZYAN, STATES
by Anna Israelyan
Aravot
Dec 10 2008
Armenia
The Civilitas Foundation held its first event in a Yerevan hotel
yesterday [9 December].The chairman of the Petrostrategy international
consulting company (Paris), Petros Terzyan, lectured on the topic
"Oil – an economic and political factor in the Caucasus".
While introducing him, the founder of the Civilitas foundation, former
Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan said that Terzyan was an unofficial
aide of the Armenian foreign ministry during his [Oskanyan’s] term
in office. This information gave ground to uncertain doubts, whether
it was not on the basis of information provided by him [Terzyan] that
Armenian top officials had stated that Azerbaijani oil reserves were
extremely exaggerated, and those reserves will deplete soon and so on.
During the lecture, Terzyan said that Kazakhstan’s oil reserves and
exports exceed Azerbaijan’s indications. Then he said that no new
oil deposits had been discovered in Azerbaijan since the collapse
of the Soviet Union. According to Terzyan, the oil extraction in
Azerbaijan will remain at its height up to 2015-20 at best, then a
gradual decrease will start, as it happens in all countries: "At the
moment, when Azerbaijan reached its golden age in the sense of oil
– the prices went down. This is interesting – currently Azerbaijan
is less important for the global oil market both in an economic and
political sense than six months ago.
"That is – the world needed the Azerbaijani oil at the beginning of
this year more [than now], it needed it two years ago; the world could
not go without Azerbaijani oil in 2005, as there was no other resource
– they needed every drop of it. However now, as the consumption
has decreased while the abundance of oil in the world continues to
increase – there will be no panic in the world if Azerbaijan stops
producing oil."
While answering a question whether we [Armenia] can become a transit
country with the construction of the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline, Mr
Terzyan said, first of all, that this structure is one of Armenia’s
biggest victories, as we finally have a second source of gas supplies
[beside the Russian gas]. He said, however, that he does not believe
that we will become a transit country: "There are big political issues
to solve so that Armenia becomes a transit country. Especially, that
we will have conflicts and differences of interests with Russia in
that case. The Russian Federation understood very well the importance
for Armenia to have a gas link with Iran. However, if tomorrow the
Iranian gas is directed to regions, where the Russian gas is supplied –
this issue will not be in mind anymore." Besides, he believes it is
open to question for whom Armenia should become a transit country
as Georgia already has "at least two sources [of gas supplies] –
Azerbaijan and Russia".