Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 20
By Emil Ismayilov - Trend:
In 2014, SOCAR (the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) will direct all of the oil produced at its fields for processing, SOCAR Vice-President for Refining, David Mammadov told journalists on Nov. 20.
Currently, part of this oil is exported via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline.
According to Mammadov, the increase in processing is due to a significant increase in gasoline consumption in the domestic market. The growth in gasoline consumption this year constituted 10.2 percent.
The increase in gasoline production is possible with large amounts of oil.
Accordingly, in 2014, SOCAR plans to direct all of its oil for processing. Only part of the oil produced by joint ventures at onshore fields will be exported.
Mammadov said that whenever it is feasible, the SOCAR oil refinery processes sweet crude from small local producers in Kazakhstan experiencing problems with sales.
After the processing of Kazakh oil, the derived product is exported including gasoline.
The total processing capacity of enterprises is over 16 million tons of oil per year.
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan is the only producer of oil products and has two refineries on its balance. One of them is the Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery that focused on the production of light petroleum products, and the second is Azneftyag Refinery that produces dark petroleum products.