BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 25. SOCAR Trading
is expanding its operations in supplying oil and oil products from
various regions and marketing them on international markets, head
of Global Business Development at SOCAR Trading Togrul Kocharli
told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of the 2nd Azerbaijan
International Investment Forum in Baku, Trend's correspondent reports from the
event.
He said the company had been trading oil and oil products with
Central Asian countries for many years.
“We have been conducting oil and oil products trading operations
with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for years. We market their
products in various markets. We started this activity with
Uzbekistan this year. The Turan Energy joint venture established
between Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan also began its actual operations
this year,” Kocharli said.
According to him, SOCAR Trading is currently supplying naphtha
from Uzbekistan and is also considering opportunities involving
diesel.
“Naphtha is currently being supplied, while the product we are
considering is Uzbek diesel. If we reach an agreement, we will
deliver this product to our Kulevi terminal and sell it from
there,” he said.
Kocharli also touched on gas supplies to Pakistan.
“We had an intergovernmental agreement on gas sales with
Pakistan. The situation has now changed, and we are not being
invited to tenders. Therefore, we currently have no sales to
Pakistan. However, the situation may change in the future, and we
continue to work in this direction,” he said.
He emphasized that SOCAR's investment and operational
opportunities in foreign markets were expanding.
Kocharli also responded to a question about where SOCAR's share
of oil from the Bahar field would be sold.
“For us, the most logical markets are Italy and Türkiye because
SOCAR has oil refineries in these countries. Most likely, around 99
percent of this oil will be directed to these refineries — either
to the refineries we recently acquired in Italy or to the STAR
refinery we built in Türkiye,” he added.
