Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan. 6 / Trend /
Venezuela may purchase additional volumes of oil from Azerbaijan to ensure the contract with Belarus to supply up to 10 million tons a year, the Belarusian agency BelTA quoted Ambassador of Venezuela to Belarus, Americo Diaz Nunez.
He said that the contract signed between Venezuela and Belarus involves Santa Barbara light oil supplies similar to the quality of Azerbaijani oil. "Perhaps, Venezuela will not be able to produce 10 million tons of oil, having demand worldwide," the diplomat said. "This means that the plans recently announced by the Belarusian side to use the swap scheme on oil supplies do not deal with replacing Venezuelan to Azerbaijani oil", he added.
He further said that PDVSA Company will additionally purchase the required amount of oil from Azerbaijan to ensure the contract of supplying 10 million tons a year for providing Belarus with the stated volumes of oil. Belarus will get this oil through the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline by paying Azerbaijan only for delivery via the pipeline.
"As you see, this cooperation is beneficial to both parties and, in particular to Belarus", the ambassador said.
The implementation of operations under this project provides for delivering Azerbaijani oil on CIF basis to Ukrainian ports and does not relate to its further transportation, a senior SOCAR representative had said earlier.
The Odessa-Brody oil transportation project sought to diversify oil supplies to Ukrainian refineries and develop the country's transit potential. The pipeline's construction was completed in May 2002. Its trunk has a length of 674 kilometers, with a pipe diameter of 1,020 millimeters. The capacity of the pipeline and the terminal provided 9-14 million tons per year during the first stage.
Over the two years since the pipeline's construction, Ukraine unsuccessfully negotiated the transportation of Caspian oil in forward direction. As the country was unable to receive any concrete proposals from companies, the Ukrainian government authorized the use of pipeline for transporting Russian oil in reverse direction in late June 2004.