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Chinese plant to begin to refine Azerbaijani oil in June

Oil&Gas Materials 21 April 2017 21:03 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 21

By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:

A refinery owned by China’s PetroChina company will begin to operate in the country’s Kunming city, Yunnan province in mid-June 2017, when the first batch of Azeri Light oil will be supplied there, a source in the Azerbaijani oil and gas market told Trend Apr. 21.

According to the source, it became known after China and Myanmar signed an agreement on the oil transportation to the oil refinery in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan.

"China and Myanmar could not agree on the oil transportation tariff for a long time, therefore the vessel with Azeri Light oil was at the port of Kyauk Phyu in Myanmar for several weeks,” the source said. “So far, 140,000 tons of Azerbaijani oil have been already shipped from the vessel to the oil storage facility.”

The source said that the oil must be supplied from the oil storage facility to the pipeline until May 16.

"It will take a month to pump the oil to the Kunming oil refinery,” the source said. “So, the plant will begin to refine Azeri Light in mid-June."

The first phase of refinery commissioning, which will last at least two months, will be initiated through the first batch of Azerbaijani oil.

Azerbaijan has been producing AZERI LT since 1997 and exports it via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Supsa pipelines.

Marketing and Operations Department of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR exported 3.91 million tons of oil from the Turkish port of Ceyhan in January-March 2017, as compared to 4.6 million tons in the same period of 2016.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov

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