By BAKU. Nov 3 (Interfax) – Azerbaijan wants long-term guarantees from the EU to buy additional volumes of Azerbaijani gas after 2027, said Elnur Mammadov, Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister.
"Currently there’s a desperate need for Europe to find alternative suppliers," Mammadov told the Financial Times. "We need to be sure that this… is not a sort of spontaneous demand… which one day will end and then all of a sudden you start buying back from Russia and say, ‘hey, well we don’t now need the gas’," he told the paper.
Azerbaijan and the EU signed a memorandum on strategic partnership in energy in July 2022, which provides for increasing Azerbaijani gas supplies to Europe to 20 billion cubic meters by 2027.
Mammadov also said the corresponding investments were needed to double the supply of Azerbaijani gas to Europe, and they should be carried out by all interested parties. He said Azerbaijan was ready to make its share of the necessary investments, but also expected the EU to step up.
