BAKU

Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR has acquired a 30 percent stake in SOCAR Terminal, a terminal port on the Aegean Sea in Turkey, from Goldman Sachs (GS) for $300 million, Zaur Gakhramanov, the SOCAR Turkiye Enerji head, told the Tribune.

“We, through JP Morgan, took a loan from a syndicate of foreign banks on favourable terms and paid GS $300 million, that is, in fact, the amount that the company had paid for a 30 percent stake in the terminal in 2014,” Gahramanov said.

The terminal port on the Aegean Sea has been commercially operating since December 6, 2016. Investments in its operation amounted to $400 million. The port’s capacity at the first stage was 800,000 containers per year, but since the end of 2017, after the second stage was commissioned, this figure has reached 1.5 million containers. The port’s capacity can be expanded to 4 million containers per year.

Zaur Gahramanov said that the annual income from the activities of SOCAR Terminal is $18-19 million, but in the coming years, it can be increased to $25 million per year by increasing the transhipment of containers through the terminal.

In September, SOCAR has acquired the remaining 13-percent stake and became the full owner of its subsidiary in Turkey, SOCAR Turkiye Enerji, from Goldman Sachs.

In August 2015, Goldman Sachs acquired this stake from SOCAR for $1.3 billion. Under the terms of the deal, the bank had the right to sell its stake in SOCAR Turkiye Enerji through an initial public offering (IPO) within the next six years. If such a sale does not take place within the specified period, then after six years Goldman Sachs had the right to sell back 10 percent of the shares to SOCAR Turkiye Enerji, and another 3 percent to SOCAR’s other subsidiary – Sermaye Investments Limited.

The sale of 13 percent of SOCAR Turkiye Enerji’s shares to Goldman Sachs six years ago allowed SOCAR to pay off the remainder from the loan raised for the privatisation of the Turkish petrochemical complex Petkim – about $1 billion.

SOCAR Turkiye Enerji owns a controlling 51-percent stake of Turkey’s major petrochemical complex Turkey Petkim Petrokimya Holding. The company has also built an oil refinery STAR, the third-largest oil refinery in Turkey, a container terminal, a power plant, and is also engaged in the supply of gas to the domestic market, the supply of petroleum products to aircraft refuelling points at the airports of a number of major cities in Turkey.

In June, SOCAR and Petkim agreed to defer the last payment for Petkim’s stake in STAR. SOCAR Turkey Enerji and Petkim agreed that payment of the last of three $240 million instalments for an 18-percent stake in STAR will be deferred to January 3, 2022.  In 2018, Petkim signed an agreement with SOCAR Turkey to buy out the stake in the STAR refinery.

SOCAR Turkiye Enerji is also the owner of the telecommunications company Millenicom since 2019.