Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, July 20 /Trend H. Hasanov /
The first tanker with Turkmen oil arrived in the Russian port of Makhachkala, online publication Oil Transport Territory (nefttrans.ru) reported with reference to the official representative of Transneft company Igor Demin.
According to the Russian publication, the Turkmen side is the owner of the cargo. The oil will be transported by Makhachkala-Novorossiysk pipeline for export shipment.
The report said that the raw materials supply from Turkmenistan became possible after the Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev signed the order on terminating the intergovernmental agreement between Russia and Azerbaijan on transit of oil through the Baku-Makhachkala-Novorossiysk oil pipeline.
"In the past five years, Azerbaijan has not been fulfilling the conditions of the intergovernmental agreement, which provided for pumping of five million tons of Azerbaijani oil. However, the actual amounts did not exceed two million tons a year," the article said. From next year, Transneft will deliver Azerbaijani oil on the basis of a commercial contract.
The Makhachkala port requires extensive reconstruction for receiving additional volumes of Turkmen oil, the Oil Transport Territory wrote. Now the maximum carrying capacity of tankers in Makhachkala is 10 thousand tons. The existing oil storage capacity of the port, as well as the lack of depth does not allow unloading large ships.
Oil production in Turkmenistan in 2012 amounted to 222,000 barrels a day, an annual review of BP said. According to the review, in 2011 this indicator was equal to 217 thousand barrels per day.
Total oil production in Turkmenistan last year was 11 million tons, which is 2.5 percent more than in 2011. The share of Turkmenistan in global oil production stood at 0.3 percent last year.
According to the estimates of BP, in 2012 the oil consumption in the country increased by 3.3 percent - to 100,000 barrels per day. BP has kept unchanged its estimates on proven oil reserves in Turkmenistan in 2012 - at the level of 0.1 billion tons (0.6 billion barrels), as in the previous year.