SOCAR: Baku Oil Refinery Started Processing Turkmen Oil

The Trans-Adriatic Gas Pipeline (TAP), built to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe, will be ready for launch in October-November this year.

This was stated by SOCAR Vice President for Investment and Marketing Elshad Nassirov during online discussions of the Caspian Political Center on the impact of COVID-19 on the energy sector (Report.az).

“Despite the global pandemic and some doubts that companies will not be able to

build the pipeline in southern Italy, and the connection of the section between Albania and Italy will not be completed on time, we are pleased to announce that the pipeline will be ready for operations on time, in October-November of this year,” said the Vice President of SOCAR.

Speaking about SOCAR’s cooperation with the countries of the eastern part of the Caspian Sea, he said that the government of Turkmenistan was offered to open a SOCAR office in Ashgabat.

Nasirov noted that SOCAR purchases raw materials from Turkmenistan, processes them at an oil refinery in Baku and exports aviation fuel produced from Turkmen raw materials to Europe and Afghanistan.

“One of the important issues is the transportation of hydrocarbons through the Caspian Sea. Over the past two years, about 5 million tons of oil have been supplied to the world market through Azerbaijan. And this already speaks of the presence of the Trans-Caspian energy corridor. Before the sanctions against Iran, we dealt with the issue of transporting Turkmen gas through Iran to Azerbaijan and Georgia. That is, gas transportation is possible even without the construction of the Trans-Caspian pipeline. Given the signing of the Convention on the Status of the Caspian Sea and the almost complete launch of the Southern Gas Corridor, there is nothing that could stop the transport of hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian to Europe,”the representative of SOCAR said.

Baku Oil Refinery named after H. Aliyev, according to the results of 2019, processed 6.05 million tons of oil. According to SOCAR, the refinery processed 3 million tons of raw materials in the first half of 2020. However, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan did not officially inform the public that it also uses imported oil for processing.