Adjara is Georgia’s strategically important region for SOCAR
Monday, May 25
Mammadov was commenting on the opening of SOCAR’s representative office in Batumi.
He said that there are several reasons of SOCAR’s opening an office in Batumi.
"First, Adjara is an autonomous republic of Georgia,” he said. “This means that it has a special status. There is also the Azerbaijani consulate. Second, the history of Azerbaijani oil is connected with Batumi. The first pipelines stretched and oil was supplied from here. Third, this rapidly growing region is bordering with Turkey. The neighboring countries are seeking to strengthen their presence here. Azerbaijan must not be away from these processes. The office opened at one of the central streets of Batumi, on the first boulevard line called Baku."
He said that another important reason is that SOCAR started supplying gas to this region.
"When we started the program of gasification, Adjara almost had no gas,” he said. “At present, SOCAR has about 47,000 active consumers. Until the end of the year we plan to increase this number to 55,000-56,000 consumers. Of course, the gasification program has not been completed yet. It must be taken into account that Adjara is mainly a mountainous region. Proceeding from this, we are now actually close to the maximum number of consumers all over Adjara."
Earlier, SOCAR said that some 70,000 more consumers are planned to be covered in 2015 as part of the gasification program of Georgia. Thus, their number will increase to 480,000.
SOCAR and the Georgian government signed an agreement to transfer control of 30 gas distribution facilities and gas distribution networks covering such regions of Georgia as Kakheti, Mtskheta-Mtianeti, Shida and Kvemo Kartli, Adjara, Guria, Imereti, Samegrelo on December 26, 2008.
The list of gas distribution facilities was then expanded. Earlier, all these facilities were eliminated and seven regional gas facilities were created under SOCAR.
(Trend.az)