BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The State Oil Co. of the Azerbaijan Republic examined a deal with Dragon Oil to increase the volume of crude oil shipped to Georgia, officials said.
Vagif Aliyev, the head of investments at SOCAR, said his company aimed to ship 25.6 million barrels of oil and petroleum products to its Black Sea Terminal in Georgia this year, the Azerbaijan Business Center reports Friday.
"We hope to transport Turkmen oil and oil products through the terminal," he said. "We are negotiating with Dragon Oil about shipment of Turkmen oil belonging to (the company)."
Transports of oil and petroleum products reached 14.6 million barrels in 2009. Oil and petroleum production from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan travel are shipped to SOCAR's terminal in Georgia for export to Mediterranean countries.
The announcement follows a decision by Tengizshevroil, the Chevron division in Kazakhstan, to halt oil shipments through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline because of a tariff dispute.
Kazakhstan began shipping oil from its Tengiz field through BTC in 2008. Around 14 million barrels of Kazakh oil moved through the 1,099-mile pipeline in 2009.
Baku said transports of Kazakh oil through BTC halted in January.
