BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 30
By Nargiz Ismayilova – Trend:
Another tanker with Azerbaijani oil for the Mozyr oil refinery of Belarus has recently arrived in Ukraine’s Odessa port Yuzhny, Spokesman for the Belneftekhim state concern Alexander Tishchenko told Trend on June 30.
"A tanker with 85,000 tons of Azerbaijani oil arrived at the Yuzhny port at night, June 29 night and has been unloaded since early morning,” Tishchenko added. “Oil is planned to be supplied to the Mozyr oil refinery on July 10-15."
Earlier this year, SOCAR Trading (a subsidiary of the Azerbaijani State Oil Company SOCAR) supplied four batches of oil (about 335,000 tons in total) from March through April to Belneftekhim state concern through the port of Odessa and the Odessa-Brody pipeline.
Three batches with a total volume of about 250,000 tons were shipped in March while one batch in April – 85,000 tons.
“SOCAR may supply up to 1 million tons of oil to Belarus in 2020,” Belneftekhim said.
Oil was supplied from Azerbaijan to Belarus via Odessa-Brody pipeline as early as in 2011. The contract envisaged the supplies in the volume of four million tons, but the actual volume of shipments reached about 900,000 tons.
Oil supplies to Belarus in the southern direction, through Ukraine, were resumed due to a lack of import from big Russian companies caused by disagreements over the price.
Following the lack of oil supply from Russia, Belarus launched its alternative import - through the port of Klaipeda via railway to the Naftan refinery and through the port of Odessa to the Mozyr refinery through the Odessa-Brody and Brody-Mozyr oil pipelines.
Alternative oil supplies were also launched from Norway and Azerbaijan. In May, Belneftekhim began to import oil from Saudi Arabia and the US.
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