Azerbaijan, Baku, 6 March / Trend corr S. Aliyev/ The first oil consignment of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) from Georgia's Kulevi oil terminal, located at the Black Sea, is expected to be shipped in May 2009, a source close to the project reported. The construction of the terminal is almost complete. However, due to some problems in Georgia's documentation, launching of the process may be postponed to May.
The Georgian Economics Ministry had reported previously that the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), which is the owner of terminal, should submit full-fledged documents for the grant of permission to launch the Kulevi terminal. "The documentation has not been developed properly," the Ministry reported.
SOCAR owns the Kulevi terminal. The company received a large syndicated credit for its construction. The gross amount of the credit, which was established by a consortium of 15 foreign banks headed by Societe Generale, totalled $301mln. The loan is expected to be paid back by 2009.
At present, the capacity of the terminal equals 9mln tons (2mln tons of crude oil, 3mln tons of diesel fuel and 4mln tons of black oil). The capacity of the reserve tank of the terminal is 320,000 cu m. There are plans to increase the capacity of the terminal up to 20mln tons and the reserve capacity up to 380,000 cu m.
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