The French company, Total, and Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) have announced a major gas discovery at the offshore Absheron field. According to Total, the first results from the exploration well, Absheron X-2, confirm a potential of “several trillion” cubic feet of gas (35.3 cubic... MORE

On September 2, a small demonstration took place in front of the Iranian embassy in Baku. The event, organized by the Baku branch of the World Azerbaijani Congress, focused on the ecological problems of Urmiyya Lake in Iran and the related demonstrations by thousands of... MORE

Nabucco, the strategic project for transportation of Caspian gas to Europe, seems threatened by the non-strategic pipeline projects, ITGI (Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy) and TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline). These are less advanced, compared with Nabucco, but are also less ambitious in scope, and consequently easier to source with... MORE

The ITGI (Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy) and TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline), with planned capacities at 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually for each, require no further sourcing beyond Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field, Phase Two. Both ITGI and TAP are headed for southeastern Italy. The Nabucco project, however, is... MORE

Three pipeline project consortiums (Nabucco, ITGI, and TAP) compete against each other over priority access to gas production in Azerbaijan. The transporters’ contest is now intensifying as the deadline draws near for submitting proposals to the gas producers’ consortium in Azerbaijan.Although their respective merits are... MORE

On July 23, Elnur Aslanov, the head of the Presidential Administration’s Department for Political Analysis and Informational Provision stated: “For the better promotion of history, politics and the culture of Azerbaijan, cultural centers in various countries will be opened in the near future. The president... MORE

Barely a week after US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had asked Turkey’s leaders in Ankara to open the Turkish-Armenian border, Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has thwarted that effort by issuing an irredentist-sounding statement to youth (“Armenian President Casts Doubt On Ongoing Negotiating Processes,” EDM,... MORE

Armenian President, Serzh Sarksyan, has hinted at historic territorial claims against Turkey, and implied that he regarded the seizure of Azerbaijani territory as final. Addressing an audience of students from Armenia and the diaspora on July 23, Sarksyan was asked whether the country could regain... MORE

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a one-day working visit to Baku, where he met the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to discuss various bilateral and regional issues. Erdogan deliberately chose Baku as the destination for his second official trip abroad, since he formed his... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is “caught in a vice, which will only continue to tighten,” between democratically motivated Western pressures and Russia’s “interest in acquiring attractive Belarusian assets from a vulnerable Lukashenka,” according to David Kramer and Wess Mitchell (www.charter97.org, July 9). If so, Western sanctions... MORE