BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 25. SOCAR Trading is expanding its operations in supplying oil and oil products from various regions and marketing them on international markets, head of Global Business Development at SOCAR Trading Togrul Kocharli told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of the 2nd Azerbaijan International Investment Forum in Baku, Trend's correspondent reports from the event.
He said the company had been trading oil and oil products with Central Asian countries for many years.
“We have been conducting oil and oil products trading operations with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for years. We market their products in various markets. We started this activity with Uzbekistan this year. The Turan Energy joint venture established between Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan also began its actual operations this year,” Kocharli said.
According to him, SOCAR Trading is currently supplying naphtha from Uzbekistan and is also considering opportunities involving diesel.
“Naphtha is currently being supplied, while the product we are considering is Uzbek diesel. If we reach an agreement, we will deliver this product to our Kulevi terminal and sell it from there,” he said.
Kocharli also touched on gas supplies to Pakistan.
“We had an intergovernmental agreement on gas sales with Pakistan. The situation has now changed, and we are not being invited to tenders. Therefore, we currently have no sales to Pakistan. However, the situation may change in the future, and we continue to work in this direction,” he said.
He emphasized that SOCAR's investment and operational opportunities in foreign markets were expanding.
Kocharli also responded to a question about where SOCAR's share of oil from the Bahar field would be sold.
“For us, the most logical markets are Italy and Türkiye because SOCAR has oil refineries in these countries. Most likely, around 99 percent of this oil will be directed to these refineries — either to the refineries we recently acquired in Italy or to the STAR refinery we built in Türkiye,” he added.
