Azerbaijan’s mining industry has not developed to the required level due to both objective and subjective factors.
Operative Information Center-OMM reports that President Ilham Aliyev made the remarks at a meeting on the State Program for developing the mining and metallurgy industries.
“Unfortunately, Azerbaijan’s mining industry has not developed to the required level due to both objective and subjective factors. The objective factors are related to the fact that many of our deposits identified during the Soviet period were located in areas under occupation, while Armenia continued its policy of aggression, including the plundering of the natural resources of the Azerbaijani people and state.
“It is enough to say that during the occupation, 60,000 hectares of forest resources in the Kalbajar, Lachin and Zangilan districts were destroyed, looted, cut down and sold by Armenia. They were also set on fire after the Second Garabagh War, during the period when the Armenian armed forces were due to withdraw from the Kalbajar and Lachin districts and had been given two to three weeks to do so.
“Everyone remembers well that they destroyed the trees and did not forget the plumbing fixtures either. Apparently, two issues were most important to them: first, to completely destroy Azerbaijan’s nature, and second, to take the most valuable plumbing fixtures with them. That is probably the main reminder of the occupation period for them.
“Our natural resources, including gold, copper and molybdenum deposits, were also plundered. Naturally, during the occupation, Armenia was engaged only in looting,” the head of state stressed.
Ilham Aliyev said that some exploration work had been carried out during the Soviet period:
“However, at that time, this region, particularly Azerbaijan, was not considered a priority by the Soviet government in this field. The oil industry was regarded as the priority. Therefore, many of our deposits, namely promising deposits, are still awaiting geological exploration today.
“Of course, this has a positive side, because these reserves are still underground. We will apply very specific mechanisms under the State Program to resolve these issues. First of all, the priority is to launch as soon as possible the deposits currently under development in the territories liberated from occupation. These primarily include gold, copper and molybdenum deposits located in the Kalbajar, Aghdara and Zangilan districts.
“Work has already begun in Aghdara. I hope work will begin in Kalbajar and Zangilan in the near future as well, so that extraction from the identified deposits can commence. At the same time, we must conduct a comprehensive analysis of the existing deposits and determine their reserves using modern geological methods.
“There were certain figures from the Soviet period. However, approximately 40 years have passed since then. The data has become outdated, and there are new technologies today that no one in the Soviet period could even have imagined.”
