We’ve written several times about about the delicate dance performed by Azerbaijan to balance their interests between cooperating with Russia and occasionally leaning toward the West, from the humiliation of Dick Cheney (once he was a lame duck) to the recent MoU signed between Gazprom and SOCAR (seen as a fatal blow to the Nabucco pipeline project).

An article we came across from New Europe reports that Nabucco is still fighting for life, despite this Gazprom pre-emption:

But the Nabucco spokesman said that gas for the first stage of Nabucco would come from Phase 2 of Azerbaijan’s massive Shah Deniz field. “Shah Deniz is one of the sources that are most feasible. We have no information that this (the Gazprom-SOCAR deal) would have any impact and we also know that this is not actually Shah Deniz 2 gas which was somehow intended for Russia,” Dolezal said.