BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Azerbaijan's parliament passed an unusual law guaranteeing a multibillion-dollar Caspian Sea oil development contract with a consortium of Western companies.


The law, passed Friday, said simply that Azerbaijan's parliament and president "guarantee the implementation" of the 30-year deal, which involves $7.4 billion in investments into three of the country's oilfields.


A consortium of eight Western oil companies and Russia's LUKoil signed the contract in September, and parliament ratified it Nov. 15.


But the Western partners wrote parliament last week saying ratification alone was not enough. In the absence of legislation regulating oil production, they asked for special guarantees.


The consortium envisions the start of production about four years after development begins, increasing to a rate of about 86,000 metric tons (600,000 barrels) a day by the end of the decade. They expect to extract a total of 511 million metric tons of crude oil.