President Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan can achieve its goal of doubling natural gas exports to Europe, although his country has not yet received long-term sales contracts to invest billions of dollars in increasing production.Bloomberg agency quotes Agerpres.

The Caspian state’s natural gas exports to Europe will rise to 12 billion cubic meters (bcm) this year from 8 billion cubic meters in 2021, indicating that Azerbaijan is “confident of achieving its goal of doubling supplies by 2027,” Aliyev said at a ceremony pipeline opening. 170 kilometers long, which connects Novi Iskar, near Sofia, and the city of Nis in Serbia.

Azerbaijan, which began selling gas to Europe in 2020, agreed last year with the European Commission to increase volumes to 20 billion cubic meters over the next five years. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than ten European countries approached Azerbaijan about natural gas, but the negotiations did not yield results, sources told Bloomberg on condition of anonymity.

Last week, Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov refused to say whether there was any progress in negotiations with Europe. Serbia will become the seventh European country to receive gas from Azerbaijan, Aliyev told state news agency Azartac.

State energy company Socar reached an agreement in November to export 400 million cubic meters of gas to Serbia next year.

Exports to Bulgaria will increase to almost 1 billion cubic meters this year from 500 million cubic meters in 2022 and 270 million cubic meters in 2021, Aliyev said.

European buyers are reluctant to sign long-term contracts to buy fossil fuels, with other options in mind, such as increased purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar and the United States.

Plans to increase gas imports from Azerbaijan run into political obstacles

Another sensitive topic is the nature of Ilham Aliyev’s regime, with Azerbaijan essentially an autocratic state, and his recent attacks on Armenia, with the government in Baku rejecting any European or international mediation to resolve the conflict.

Ilham Aliyev, 61, who succeeded his father Heydar Aliyev, rules this hydrocarbon-rich former Soviet republic with a strong hand and suppresses any opposition. Even if critics have condemned the authoritarian tendencies of the Aliyev regime, his power remains intact.

President Aliyev held a referendum in 2009 to approve constitutional amendments that allowed for unlimited presidential mandates. A new amendment to the Constitution in 2016 extended the president’s term of office to seven years. In the same year, he appointed his wife Mehiban Aliyeva to the post of first vice president.

In fact, although elections are nominally held in Azerbaijan, the country is considered a de facto dictatorship, where human rights are not respected and political freedoms do not exist.

This has led some geopolitical experts to note that the European Union’s plans to significantly increase natural gas imports from Azerbaijan following its energy separation from Russia are merely replacing dependence on one brutal dictator for another.

Last week, Ilham Aliyev announced the appointment of early presidential elections, which analysts believe are aimed at easily securing a new mandate for him after his victory in Nagorno-Karabakh.

About 75% of Azerbaijanis approve of Aliyev’s handling of the conflict, according to a poll by the country’s Center for Social Research, a public institution.