Azerbaijan reassures oil giants after leader slams BP

Azerbaijan on Monday reassured international energy companies that there was no threat to their business after the country's leader slammed BP for alleged errors that caused an oil output decline. "The statements of the head of state... do not contain any threat in relation to foreign oil companies," Industry and Energy Minister Natiq Aliyev told journalists. "There is no threat of termination of the contracts with the companies," he said. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev last week sharply criticised BP for what he called "grave errors" that caused a decline in output from several Caspian Sea oil fields and cost the country $8.1 billion. Aliyev accused the British oil giant of not fulfilling its promises about output levels and said "serious measures" must be taken to rectify the situation. The industry and energy minister said however that these "measures" simply concerned the stabilisation of production in the oil fields concerned. BP-Azerbaijan has said that it is working to resolve any problems. BP has considerable assets in the ex-Soviet state, including stakes in the affected Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil fields and the huge Shah Deniz offshore gas field. It also part-owns and operates the strategic Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the main export route for Azerbaijani oil. A mainly Muslim country wedged between Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan is a key partner in projects to deliver Caspian Sea energy reserves to the West through pipelines to Turkey, bypassing Russia.