SOCAR President, BP Regional Manager meet with AmCham members
Baku, November 17, AZERTAC
American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan (AmCham Azerbaijan) organized its monthly members’ luncheon featuring participation and speech by President of SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev and BP Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gary Jones. More than 200 participants attended the event, including representatives of diplomatic corps.
Opening the event, President of AmCham Azerbaijan Nuran Karimov and Executive Director of AmCham Azerbaijan Natavan Mammadova welcomed guests and expressed their appreciation to Mr. Abdullayev and Mr. Jones for joining the luncheon as keynote speakers.
Afterwards, BP Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gary Jones addressed the audience and stressed 2 billion tonnes of Azerbaijani oil production as an important landmark and a successful page in the history of the country. Mr. Jones also talked about the activities of BP in the country: “BP has been safely and efficiently operating in Azerbaijan for 25 years. We are proud to have built a very successful and reliable partnership here. To date the progress and development driven by this partnership have been extraordinary. We have recently extended our major contract with Azerbaijan out to the mid-century opening a new chapter in our partnership.”
In his turn, President of SOCAR Abdullayev thanked AmCham Azerbaijan for devoting this luncheon to oil and gas strategy of Azerbaijan, as one the leading sectors of economy. He spoke about SOCAR’s transformation from a local enterprise into a transnational company, highlighting SOCAR’s cooperation with foreign companies, while emphasizing the importance of SOCAR’s diversified investment strategy for boosting national revenues of Azerbaijan: “As the oil price was high, a vast amount of investment has been allocated in the oil and gas production. SOCAR, however, decided quite the opposite - to diversify its’ assets, while investing increasingly in refining and chemical production. Once the oil price dropped, we’ve become more confident in the soundness of this decision. We’ve experienced much less price fluctuation in the chemicals, than in the raw oil business. Eventually, we managed to generate even higher revenues from refining & chemicals in the recent years, than previously. Thus we continue investing in various countries throughout the world, in order to add value to our national wealth.”
It should be noted that AmCham Azerbaijan Luncheons are organized monthly by the Chamber with participation of high ranked government officials, members of Azerbaijani Parliament and diplomatic corps.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan is a leading private, non-profit business association supporting and promoting the interests of foreign and local businesses in Azerbaijan. Established in 1996, AmCham is composed of over 260 Regular and Associate Member Companies active in every sector of the Azerbaijani economy. AmCham Azerbaijan represents nearly 80% of all foreign investment, as well as a significant portion of local investment in Azerbaijan.
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