The Diplomat
Azerbaijan celebrated, last 20th, the XXV anniversary of the “Contract of the Century” aimed at developing the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshlí oil field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, according to the Embassy of that country in Madrid.
The contract was signed in 1994 under the direction of National Leader Heydar Aliyev with an international consortium of eleven large oil companies representing eight countries. With his signature, he indicates the diplomatic representation, ensured economic stability and created the basis for Azerbaijan’s successive advances, which became an integral part of the global economy. In the country began the new oil boom, the second in the twentieth century.
The “Contract of the Century” entered the list of the most important agreements in the world both in terms of the number of hydrocarbon reserves and the total volume of planned investments; it opened the way to the signing of 26 agreements, with the participation of 41 oil companies from 19 countries of the world. All this placed Azerbaijan on the world map as an important emerging country producer and exporter of energy, underlines the Embassy.
In the following period, Heydar Aliyev’s policy was developed by his successor, the current president of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. In 2011, the Joint Declaration between Azerbaijan and the European Commission on the Southern Gas Corridor Project was signed; in June 2012, the Agreement on the TANAP Project between Azerbaijan and Turkey; in February 2013, the Interstate Agreement on the TAP Project between Albania, Italy and Greece. In December 2013, in Baku, the final investment decision was taken on the Shahdeniz-2 field, which went down in history under the name “21st Century Contract”. Work has already been completed on three segments of the Southern Gas Corridor project led by Azerbaijan – Shahdeniz-2, the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline and TANAP; completion of the fourth segment – TAP is complete.
The Embassy highlights the extension until 2050 of the “Contract of the Century” for the development and exploitation of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshlí oil fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. In the official signing ceremony of the contract, held on September 14, 2017, President Ilham Aliyev emphasized the importance of the extension of the contract for global energy security and recalled that it was in Azerbaijan where for the first time was made the industrial extraction of oil, as well as the extraction of marine deposits.
