While the oil of Baku spread uselessly upon the waters of the Caspian Sea, Armenia lacked the fuel needed to warm hospitals and orphanages and to operate railways on a normal schedule.
Although diplomatic envoy Tigran Bekzadian negotiated the purchase of up to eight million poods of petroleum to be exported duty free and the Armenian Council of Ministers approved the transaction in July, the sale was not effected.
Khan Tekinskii, chief of the Azerbaijani mission in Erevan, was urging his government to use its economic advantage and suspend all petroleum shipments to Armenia until the territorial question had been settled.
Foreign Minister Jafarov replied on July 24 that the sale would not be confirmed without significant modification, warning Tekinskii not to let the Armenian government know about this this strategy of procrastination.
For the rest of 1919, therefore, Armenia had to rely on indirect purchases and on occasional allocations from British military authorities and American relief agencies.
The Republic of Armenia, Vol. II: From Versailles to London, 1919-1920 by Richard G. Hovannisian, p. 171.
