The U.S. Energy Secretary is confident that the incoming Obama administration will maintain an interest in Caspian Sea energy resources.

“It is my firm belief that this effort and this region of the world will also be a priority for the next administration,” Samuel Bodman said Friday at an energy summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, attended by presidents and senior officials from regional nations including Turkey, Georgia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Hungary.
The U.S. official added that his country continues to seek diversification of export routes for the region’s oil and gas, which are still dominated by Russia.
“The USA supports any new project which is in the interest of providing energy to Europe,” Bodman said.
Most participants signed a declaration that stressed the importance of diversifying export routes and expressed support for existing and planned Western-backed pipelines that bypass Russia.
Since the Russia-Georgia military confrontation in August, during which a gas pipeline passing through Georgia was attacked, Europe has been considering the development of projects such as the Nabucco pipeline as alternatives.
Bodman added that the Nabucco pipeline project could give a much-needed boost to global energy security.
Meanwhile, the state energy firms of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan agreed on Friday to begin shipping Kazakh oil across the Caspian Sea from 2013.
The deal follows up on a 2006 deal for Kazakhstan to partake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline project, a pipeline that bypasses Russia to transfer oil from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Turkey.
(Source: Press TV)