Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 8 / Trend S. Aliyev /
Transneft has suspended oil pumping via Baku-Makhachkala- Novorossiysk pipeline because some elements were illegally cut into it, the press secretary for the pipeline company Igor Demin was quoted as saying RIA Novost on Tuesday.
"Oil pumping through the Baku-Makhachkala-Novorossiysk oil pipeline was stopped," he said. "There was an oil leak between the villages of Karl Marx and Vinogradnoe in the Kizlyar region of Dagestan. As a result of the leakage, about five cubic metres of fuel spilled. The area of contamination was approximately 30 to 35 square metres."
Transneft expects to resume pumping via Baku-Novorossiysk during the next three hours.
SOCAR will sell two batches of oil amounting to 210,000 tons from the Russian port of Novorossiysk in November. The company exported 1.54 million tons by pipeline in January to October compared to 1.78 million tons in January to October 2010.
SOCAR exported 2.24 million tons via the northern route last year compared to 2.5 million tons in 2009. It also exported 1.2 million tons of oil in 2008 and about 1.2 million tons in 2007. The figure is similar to 2006. The export through the pipeline was 1.6 million tons in 2005.
SOCAR tranships oil extracted from its own fields, as well as that of the joint consortiums operating onshore in Azerbaijan through Novorossiysk.
The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) became the operator of the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline by late 2007. It then transferred tits functions to SOCAR.