On May 14, 2014 the annual session of shareholders of Statoil company, the state oil and gas concern of Norway, will take place in Stavanger.
Suspension of the company’s activities in some countries will be among one of the issues on the agenda. In particular, the shareholders offer to stop oil and gas operations in Canada, Arctic, Azerbaijan and Angola, reported www.topneftegtas.ru.
The shareholders believe that it will be better to spend the funds for development of alternative and renewable sources of energy and introduction of the similar projects in Norway.
The shareholders also demanded to consider oil production in Arctic as strategically unacceptable, because of drilling in high risk zones.
“I would not believe that Statoil will decide to leave Azerbaijan,” said Ilham Shabanov, chief of the Azerbaijan Centre of Oil Studies.
He said though the first signs that Norwegian company is losing interest in the Azerbaijani projects were noticed in December 2013 when it decided to reduce its share in the biggest gas project in the Caspian Sea Shah-Deniz by 10% and not to be involved in the big infrastructure project trans-Anadolu gas pipeline (TANAP), which will make the basis of the South Gas Corridor.
“The thing is that all Statoil’s projects in the Caspian Sea are located in Azerbaijan and Statoil’s leaving the country would mean loss of the entire Caspian region. On the other hand, at present in addition to Shah-Deniz, Statoil has a big production project in Azerbaijan such as Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli, which produces about 650,000 barrels a day and the exploration projects and there is also a probability of discovery of good gas and condensate resources. Statoil is also shareholder of the main export pipeline of Azerbaijan – Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC). None of the companies would like to give up such assets,” the expert added.
On the other hand, the proposals to suspend the projects in several countries, including Azerbaijan, have been forwarded by Statoil’s shareholders, which represent international NGOs or represent their interest. “They openly urged oil companies to stop cooperation with the countries with dictatorship regime. However, the public companies build their activities on the basis of interests of majority of shareholders and not separate groups. Thus, one should not expect that Statoil company’s strategy in Azerbaijan would change after the session in May, Shaban concluded.
