Azerbaijani President has received Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucus Institute at Johns Hopkins, President’s Press Service told APA

The era of cheap energy is over as oil production is not rising fast enough to meet demand amid a lack of spending, BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward said, Bloomberg reports.

The Energy Information Agency (EIA) of the United States has put up the forecast of the American WTI oil prices by $12 a barrel up to $122 for 2008, as a result of the increase in the oil demand by 1mln barrels a day worldwide.

The further high demand for energy and unstable supplies by some oil producing regions will further contribute to the price rise, EIA said to TrendCapital on 11 June.

The worldwide demand for oil in 2008 will total 86.38mln barrel a day, and 87.7mln a barrel a day in 2009.

Strategy on CAREC (Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation) program, under the project on transport and trade assistance in the region, with a $16bln budget, is currently being discussed by the program member-countries in Baku, within the framework of a meeting which began in Baku on 11 June.

A meeting which will also focus on the implementation of this strategy will be held on 12 June.

CAREC events are being held in Baku in 2008 due to Azerbaijan’s current chairmanship over the program. Initially, consultations on transportation issues were held at the workshop ‘CAREC Trade Logistics and Efficiency Monitoring’, held in Baku in April.

During the meeting, Baku was proposed to become the transit center in the second transport corridor (which covers China –Central Asia - Europe), proposed for construction under CAREC program on assistance to trade and development of transport in the region- adopted at the end of last year.