"I am not ready to comment on someone else's thoughts. In the name of our company I can say that BP-Azerbaijan does not, did not, and will not have any plans to sell any of its assets in Azerbaijan," Rashid Javanshir said in an interview with Azeri television channel ANS.
During a visit to Baku last week, the head of Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom
Gazprom originally expressed interest in BP's Azeri gas assets in June following BP's announcement that it would sell $10 billion in assets to cover costs related to the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
In late July BP revised its asset-sale plans and is now looking to sell $30 billion (£19.3 billion) of assets -- mainly upstream oil and gas fields-- over the next 18 months.
BP is a co-leader of the Shakh Deniz gas deposit with Norway's Statoil
Both Russian and European Union-backed pipeline projects are now competing to secure gas contracts from the field's second production phase, known as Shakh Deniz II, set to come on stream in 2016.
BP is also the largest shareholder in the consortium that operates Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil fields, which the government says holds 8.8 billion barrels in reserves.
(Reporting by Afet Mehtiyeva; writing by Jessica Bachman, editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov)
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