Oil & Gas News

Refineries hike supplies 
Oil refineries in Azerbaijan in January-February 2003 supplied 916,700 tonnes of oil products to the fuel market in January-February 2003, up 15.7 per cent on last years figure, the  State Statistics Committee said in a monthly report. The domestic market has consumed 65 per cent of the total supply, with the remaining 35 per cent slated for export.Azerenerji accounted for 61.8 per cent of supplies to the domestic market, Azernefttachizat (a SOCAR division supplying oil products to the domestic market) - 14 per cent, the private company Azpetrol - 10.4 per cent and the state concern Azerbaijani Airlines - 8.9 per cent. As reported earlier, Azerbaijani oil refineries increased production of oil products 14.3 per cent year-on-year in the first two months of 2003 to amount to 1.65m tonnes.

232,000 tons of oil shipped through northern route
232,000 tons of oil were shipped through the northern export pipeline in March, falling short of the forecast by 18,000 tons.  SOCAR Foreign Relations Department has told AssA-Irada that following negotiations with Russia's Transneft, it was decided to recover any deficit in oil transportation in the second quarter of this year. The deficit in oil transportation through the northern route constituted 135,000 tons over January-February.

Oil prices drop
The Iraqi war resulted sent down oil prices in world markets, in contrary to pundits' prognosis. The Azerbaijani oil price fell down from $35.87 to $24.96 on March 21. SOCAR Foreign Relations Department has told AssA-Irada that the decrease in oil price stopped and Azeri Light brand oil of Azerbaijan recovered up to $26.36.
The state budget has estimated crude price at $19.5 per barrel.

Arcadia to purchase April oil output
Arcadia, an international company, has won a procurement tender for the April consignment of 140,000 tons of Azerbaijani oil to be exported along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline. The oil will be shipped from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on April 14-15, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) told AssA-Irada. Novorossiysk will also ship a consignment of 120,000 tons of oil for the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), however SOCAR did not say who this was destined for. Thus, Baku-Novorossiysk will hopefully carry a total of 260,000 tons of crude in April, compared with a planned 245,000 tons. Since Transneft has limited the amount of oil flowing to the port of Novorossiysk because of inclement weather, SOCAR has failed for three months running to export as much oil as it needs along this route. As a result, the shortage in the oil transportation through the northern route constituted 135,000 tons in January-February.SOCAR plans to export 2.5m tons of oil in 2003 as a whole.