BAKU

Azerbaijan reduced shipments of oil through Georgia and Turkey via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in the first four months of the year as the COVID-19 pandemic impacted both demand and production.

The shipments declined to 68.645 million barrels per day (bpd) in January-April this year, down from 80.554 million bpd in the same period last year, Botas, the pipeline’s operator in Turkey, said.

In April alone, shipments totalled 16.607 million bpd, down from 20.133 million bpd in April 2020.

Botas said that crude had been loaded onto 92 tankers and sent to the world markets in January-April, 2021. In January-April 2020 oil was loaded onto 103 tankers.

A BP-led consortium produces oil at Azerbaijan’s giant off-shore Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oilfields, which account for most of the country’s oil production. Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR is a shareholder in the consortium.

BP said earlier this month that oil output at its projects in Azerbaijan declined to 484,000 bpd in the first quarter of 2021 from 524,000 bpd a year earlier.

Azerbaijan also exports oil via Georgia by rail and through the Baku-Supsa pipeline as well as via Russia through Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline.

Azerbaijan shipped 253,076 tonnes of oil via Russia in January-April this year, Russia’s Central Dispatch Office of the Fuel and Energy Complex, said in a report.

In April, oil shipments totalled 84,031 tonnes, it said.

SOCAR stopped supplies to Russia’s Black Sea’s port of Novorossiisk in March 2019, citing planned maintenance on the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline.

The company diverted crude flows to its own Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline after the suspension of transit via Russia.

Shipments resumed on July 15 last year and the total transit of oil from Azerbaijan via Russia amounted to 613,029 tonnes in 2020.

Shipments were suspended again in January 2021, but SOCAR had signed a contract with Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft to transport more than one million tonnes of oil through the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline this year.

SOCAR said in March it had planned to boost its oil transit via Russia by 1.8 times year-on-year in 2021.

Azerbaijan pumps oil through a 1,330-km pipeline from the capital Baku to Novorossiisk, a port on Russia’s Black Sea coast, since 1997.