The “Contract of the Century” was both economically and politically useful for Azerbaijan. It showed that Azerbaijan is an independent state and reliable partner. It’s profitable for the leading countries and companies to work and invest in here. It’s not accidental that 34 more agreements have been signed with foreign companies following the Contract of the Century.

The Contract of the Century caused a large volume of increase in oil production, SOCAR first Vice-President Khoshbakht Yusifzade said in his interview to Respublika newspaper.

According to him, the output increased 5.6 times from 9 million tonnes in 1997 to 51 million tonnes in 2010:

“Azeri, chirag fields, deepwater part of Guneshli field have produced 416.5 million tonnes of oil and 128.2 billion cubic meters of gas since beginning of the development. Currently, these fields produce 2.6 million tonnes of oil and over 1 bcm of gas per month. Participants of Azer-Chirag-Guneshli project have been getting revenue from profit oil for 18 years. Azerbaijan has sold 231.8 millon tonnes of profit oil till January 1, 2017. Azerbaijan’s profit oil made up 19.3 million tonnes or 59% of total 32.7 million tonnes sold in the world markets in 2016. As is known, the oil previously was transporting through Baku-Novorossiysk and Baku-Supsa pipelines.

However, the Contract of the Century led to launch of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Till January 1, 2017, 435.4 million tonnes of Azerbaijani oil have been transported to world market. Of this, 321.7 million tonnes were transported via BTC. The Contract of the Century introduced Azerbaijan as an oil country, but the Shahdeniz field, which was discovered in June 1999 and has 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million tonnes of condensate reserves, also presented Azerbaijan as a gas exporting country to the world”.