State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) plans to further decrease its oil exports via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, SOCAR Vice President Elshad Nasirov told reporters today in Baku. According to him, in 2008, 1mn tons of Azerbaijani oil is expected to be transferred through Novorossiysk.
The Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline has been involved in exporting the Azerbaijani oil since 1998 having contracted amount of annual transfer equal to 5mn tons.
Within eight months of the year, 1.51mn tons of Azerbaijani oil have been exported, 817,000 tons of them are exported by the SOCAR, 69,000 tons by the Azerbaijani International Operator Company, which stopped using the pipeline on April 1 this year.