BAKU

Azerbaijan shipped 253,076 tonnes of oil via Russia in January-April this year, Russia’s Central Dispatch Office of the Fuel and Energy Complex, said in a report.

In April, oil shipments totalled 84,031 tonnes, it said.

Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR stopped supplies to Russia’s Black Sea’s port of Novorossiisk in March 2019, citing planned maintenance on the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline.

The company diverted crude flows to its own Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline after the suspension of transit via Russia.

Shipments resumed on July 15 last year and the total transit of oil from Azerbaijan via Russia amounted to 613,029 tonnes in 2020.

Shipments were suspended again in January 2021, but SOCAR had signed a contract with Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft to transport more than one million tonnes of oil through the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline this year.

SOCAR said in March it had planned to boost its oil transit via Russia by 1.8 times year-on-year in 2021.

Azerbaijan pumps oil through a 1,330-km pipeline from the capital Baku to Novorossiisk, a port on Russia’s Black Sea coast. The oil-rich country uses this pipeline since 1997.

Azerbaijan also exports oil via Georgia and Turkey through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and via Georgia by rail and through the Baku-Supsa pipeline.

Azerbaijan exported 68.645 million barrels of oil through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in the first four months of 2021, down from 80,554 million barrels in the same period last year, Botas, the pipeline operator in Turkey, said.

Botas said that crude had been loaded onto 92 tankers and sent to the world markets in January-April, 2021. In January-April 2020 oil was loaded onto 103 tankers.

A BP-led consortium produces oil at Azerbaijan’s giant off-shore Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oilfields, which account for most of the country’s oil production. SOCAR is a shareholder in the consortium.

BP said last week that oil output at its projects in Azerbaijan declined to 484,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter of 2021 from 524,000 bpd a year earlier.