SOCAR will be unable to pump oil via northern route in Apr-Jun

According to Aliyev, 660,000 tons of oil scheduled for export by SOCAR in April-June 2005 was sent for refinery in two oil refinery plants based in Baku with regard to additional amount of oil production and their export to world markets.

The overload of the route in the Russian direction was linked with the beginning of oil production by AIOC in February 2005 in Azerbaijani section of the Caspian until the commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan main export oil pipeline. It forced the AIOC to use its priority as an operator in the oil transportation and use the quotes in the Baku-Novorossiyk oil pipeline.

An official of the Marketing and Economic Operations Department told Reuters AIOC would nevertheless present to SOCAR part of June quotations in the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline.

Starting from 2000 the annual amount of oil export by SOCAR via the Baku- Novorossiysk oil pipeline comprised 2.5-2.6 million tons of the total (9 million tons). SOCAR delivers the rest part of oil to refinery at its oil refinery plants. Following the growing volumes of oil production in Azeri, AIOC fully exploits the discharge capacity of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline (134,000 barrels of oil a day), and agreed with the Azerbaijani private trader Azpetrol on use of its oil terminal for oil delivery via railway to Batumi with further realization in the world market. In 2005 production by AIOC will exceed 11 million tons against 6.4 million tons in 2004. The commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline with the capacity of 50 million tons a year was scheduled for autumn 2005.