Saakashvili Hails Georgia’s Energy Security
Speaking to a group of Georgian television journalists in Sofia on a sideline of energy summit on April 24, President Saakashvili said, Georgia managed to increase its energy security in recent years.
“Due to Russia’s energy blackmail, most of these countries were practically frozen in winter, people died, enterprises stopped functioning and economy suffered huge losses. You remember that Russia was saying then – ‘you see, I did not cut gas supplies to Georgia ‘– it was a commercial issue then. Russia did not cut gas supplies to Georgia only because we managed to find alternative sources in previous years. We have a contract with very reliable Azerbaijan under which not only complete gasification will take place but gas prices will not increase for our people, individual consumers. Moreover, we pay for gas several times less than the consumers pay in Europe. So Georgia is in much better condition from this point of view. We do not face this problem. We are here to help this part of Europe to receive gas through using Georgia’s transit opportunities. On the other hand, we want to achieve that new terminals are built in Georgia, people get jobs there, money is invested in our economy, more money is transferred to the budget from transit and Georgia’s geo-political and political-strategic importance is increased,” he said.
“I believe that recently, especially after the August war, when rockets were fired to our oil pipeline, this topic not only continues existence, everybody understood that it is time to wake up and strengthen this direction [of energy security]. Therefore, the aggressor has received quite an opposite result in our case. On the contrary, the discussions over this issue have become more intensive and concrete results are already obvious,” Saakashvili added.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
