The Department of Marketing & Economic Relations (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan; SOCAR) has summarized the tender procedure for this year’s fifth shipment of REBCO (Russian export mixture) crude oil from Novorossiysk port of Russia.
SOCAR reported that under the tender results, an oil shipment (600,000 barrels) will be purchased by Vitol Company (Switzerland). The loading from Novorossiysk port was planned for September 29-30.
The 1st (605,000 barrels) and 2nd (615,000 barrels) shipments in 2008 that sailed away from the port on January 29-31 and March 25-27 respectively were bought by UK’s Glencore Energy Ltd. The third one (600,000 barrels) will b sailed away from the port on April 14-15 by Arcadia Petroleum.
In 2007 SOCAR sold eight shipments of REBCO crude oil. The 1st, 3rd, and 7th oil shipments were purchased precisely by Glencore Energy UK Ltd. REBCO oil shipment from SOCAR were also bought by Oil Refineries Ltd (5th and 6th shipments), REOC Ltd (2nd), Sunoil SA (4th), and Arcadia Petroleum Limited (8th). Last year SOCAR exported 1.228 million tons of oil via northern route Baku-Novorossiysk. This January export via Baku-Novorossiysk was not carried out in connection with transfer of operatorship over Azerbaijani segment of the pipeline from Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) to SOCAR. The transfer took place on February 2 and a little later SOCAR solved all issues with oil transportation.