Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline transported around 20.7 million tons of Turkmen crude oil and oil products to the global markets over the past three years, Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan Parviz Shahbazov said during his speech at the 4th Energy Ministerial Meeting of Economic Cooperation Organization held online on Friday.
The ECO Energy Ministerial Meeting was attended high-level representatives of the organization's member countries – Iran, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan– and a number of international organizations, according to the Azerbaijan’s Energy Ministry’s press release.
The Minister added that the BTC pipeline transported 106 thousand tons of Kazakh oil last year.
Emphasizing the role of the Southern Gas Corridor in the region’s energy integration, Shahbazov said that “this year, 2.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas were exported to Turkish consumers through TANAP, and 2.8 billion cubic meters were exported through TAP to European consumers.”
The ECO Secretary General Hadi Soleimanpour noted the goals of the Organization in the next decade to bring the share of green energy in the total energy balance between member countries to a significantly higher level than now, to strengthen cooperation in the field of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency.
Upon the outcomes of the meeting, the officials adopted the Baku Declaration with the aim of strengthening energy cooperation within the ECO. The document provides for broad cooperation between ECO member countries in the supply of crude oil, natural gas, petrochemicals and petroleum products, the development of electricity networks, regional trade in electricity, clean energy sources, energy efficiency, financing clean energy transition in line with global steps to combat climate change.
The ECO is a regional interstate economic organization founded in 1985. Turkmenistan became a member of ECO in 1992.
