European officials have pitched Azerbaijan on a scheme to run its gas through a pipeline that currently brings Russian fuel to the EU via Ukraine, a senior Azerbaijani official told POLITICO, APA reports.
The proposal is a way to keep natural gas flowing to Europe — while cutting out Russia — when a transit deal between Kyiv and Moscow expires at the year's end. The EU has previously said it was willing to let the deal expire, as it was confident that enough energy supplies were coming from elsewhere.
“Azerbaijan has been reached out [to] by the European Union and the transit countries [that] we are talking about on the issue,” Hikmet Hajiyev, a senior adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, said in an interview with POLITICO.
“Currently we are considering different options as to how we can contribute to that process,” he added. “I would refrain from putting in a time frame, but again, there was … an appeal and we have taken it seriously because it’s a matter of European energy security.”
The Azerbaijan scheme is being chalked up to growing anxiety in several EU countries, including Slovakia and Hungary, that have long relied on the pipeline to power industry and heat homes.
“We see some security of supply risks when it comes to the end of transit through Ukraine, due to existing infrastructure bottlenecks in [the] European gas system,” one diplomat from a Central European country, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said.
“There is something happening on the issue,” the diplomat confirmed.
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