Reuters: Kazakhstan will supply oil through the Azerbaijani pipeline bypassing Russia

From September, Kazakhstan will send part of its crude oil through Azerbaijanʼs largest oil pipeline, bypassing Russia.

This was reported to Reuters by sources familiar with the matter.

Kazakhstanʼs state-owned oil company Kazmunaigaz (KMG) is negotiating with the trading arm of Azerbaijanʼs state-owned company SOCAR for permission to sell 1.5 million tons of crude oil through an Azerbaijani pipeline that supplies fuel to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

According to Reuters sources, the final contract should be signed at the end of August, and deliveries through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline will begin in September.

Another 3.5 million tons of Kazakh crude oil per year from 2023 can be delivered through another Azerbaijani pipeline to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa.

In this way, the total volume of supplies will be slightly more than 100,000 barrels per day, or 8% of the flows of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which passes through the territory of the Russian Federation.

• Kazakh oil exports account for more than 1% of global supplies, or about 1.4 million barrels per day. For 20 years, this oil was transported through the pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (KTP) to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. In July 2022, a Russian court threatened to shut down KTK, prompting the Kazakh government to look for other ways to transport fuel.