Azerbaijan and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday signed an agreement which commits Baku to providing "substantial" long-term gas supplies to EU countries. "This is a major breakthrough," Barroso was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the commission after the joint declaration was signed with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Barroso said it was an important step towards creating the Southern Gas Corridor, a project that envisages the construction of several pipelines to bring Caspian Sea and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, reducing its dependence on Russian energy. "This new supply route will enhance the energy security of European consumers and businesses," Barroso said.
The EU sees the Southern Gas Corridor project as vital to future energy security following disputes that disrupted supplies of Russian gas to some European countries. The joint declaration says that the planned transit corridor reflects "the shared strategic objective of the European Union and the Republic of Azerbaijan to diversify gas delivery routes and establish direct energy and transport links."
The declaration states that ex-Soviet Azerbaijan will be a "substantial contributor" to the Southern Gas Corridor but does not specify the volume of gas which will be supplied. The European Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, who travelled to Baku with Barroso, also welcomed the agreement.
"As gas imports increase in the decades to come, we need new supplier countries, Azerbaijan foremost amongst them, in addition to our established partners," Oettinger was quoted as saying in the commission's statement. The pipelines envisaged by the Southern Gas Corridor plan include Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy, White Stream, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and Nabucco, a proposed new 3,300-kilometre (2,050-mile) conduit between Turkey and Austria which has yet to secure enough supplies to make it viable.