BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 18. Azerbaijan is
important for NATO because of energy security, NATO Secretary
General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with AZERTAC,
Trend reports.

“It was extremely important for NATO allies in Europe to wean
off Russian gas, and increased deliveries from Azerbaijan have
enabled NATO allies in Europe to be independent of Russia as a gas
supplier. And that was a very fast and quick process that actually
went quite well, given the very difficult circumstances. There is a
demand now for further increasing the gas export from roughly 12
billion cubic meters to 20, which is a significant part of Europe`s
gas consumption, and for some allies, gas from Azerbaijan is very
important. I also welcome that work has started now not only on
providing natural gas, but also exporting power through electric
cable and direct export from Azerbaijan of power will further
increase the importance of Azerbaijan as an energy supplier to
Europe, to NATO allies in Europe. This is also part of the efforts
of Azerbaijan to develop renewable sources of energy, wind power,
offshore wind but also solar power. And by doing so, Azerbaijan has
become a part of the big energy transition, which has to take place
if we are going to be able to fight the climate change. In that
context, of course, it is also very important that Azerbaijan is
playing an important role in hosting COP-29, the big climate
conference in November this year. I really believe and hope that
COP29 here in Baku will provide us with a platform we need as an
international community to make important decisions on many issues
related to fighting global warming or climate change, not least
climate financing, to finance big investments, we need to conduct
the big energy transition,” he said.