BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.20
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR is ready to consider interesting proposals from Belarusian companies, Ibrahim Ahmadov, deputy head of the public relations and events department at SOCAR said, Trend reports.
“In recent years, SOCAR has been focusing primarily on petrochemical and refining in terms of investments, followed by gas distribution networks and expansion of gas filling stations’ network. If we have interesting offers from any Belarusian company, we will gladly consider them. But eventually, everything will depend on the project’s feasibility,” he said.
Belarus plans to purchase 1 million tons of oil from Azerbaijan as of 2021. Around 270,000 tons were delivered from January through April 2021. No deal was made for May.
Oil supplies from Azerbaijan to Belarus stood at 800,000 tons of oils in 2020.
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 2020, Belneftekhim began to import oil from Saudi Arabia and the US.
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