BBC News Business “admired” by Azerbaijan or Azerbaijani oil

March 2, 2011 - 21:52 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - BBC News Business published an article concerning Azerbaijan’s oil industry: “Everyone Wants to Be Azerbaijan's Friend.”

It seems to be an ordinary article, if it were not for… Here is a small quote from it: “In this small country on the Caspian Sea, fossil fuel reserves are never far away. This is, after all, a nation that proudly boasts of an oil industry older than its celebrated Texan counterpart.

"Everything that was conducted for the first time in the oil and gas industry was conducted here - the first industrial production of oil, the first oil tanker, the first pipeline, the first offshore oil production," boasts Elshad Nassirov, vice-president of Socar, the state oil company.

Either the article’s author is unaware of or does not want to write about the fact that Azerbaijan’s contribution to the establishment of its oil industry, which was done in the Soviet era, was too insignificant, almost zero, aside from oil and cheep labor force. However, the nowadays Azerbaijan prefers not to remember this, ascribing the entire achievements in the industry establishment to Heydar Aliyev, who was a school student in 1930s.

The author goes on saying: “Decades of Soviet rule came to an end in 1991. Two years later, the nation signed what it calls "the Contract of the Century". That contract was to build a huge pipeline from Baku into the city of Ceyhan, Turkey, carrying a million barrels of crude oil every day. Opened in 2006, the 1,800km-long pipeline delivered oil to Europe - and brought huge investment into a country that was languishing near the bottom of global economic tables. […] As the political unrest among other oil producing nations keeps crude prices hovering above the $100-a-barrel mark, the mood in Baku is bullish.”

It is not a secret that the Great Britain, specifically British Petroleum, has always had its interests in Azerbaijan, what entirely explains the author’s admiration.

Meanwhile, the final part of the article especially enraptures the British: “This is a nation gearing up to be both an important producer, but also a vital transit country.”

We’ve got Winston Churchill’s favorite expression, which is always applicable to the Armenian-Turkic relation: “Mosul oil turned out to be more valuable than Armenians’ blood.”

We would like to note that the first oil plant in Baku, which is proud of its oil industry, was established by Armenians. Baku-Batumi oil pipeline was constructed in 1887-1907 by Mantashev, Ter-Karpov and Ter-Sargsyan. It was the first oil pipeline in the world.