Azerbaijan mulls oil supply to Belarus

Baku, January 22 - Neftegaz.RU. Azerbaijan has the technical potential to supply oil to Belarus, said deputy head of the Public Relations and Event Management Department of the Azerbaijani SOCAR Ibrahim Ahmadov, Azernews reported.

"The Belarusian side has expressed its interest about the delivery of oil for its processing in Belarus. However, no decision has been made so far with this regard. In the past, we supplied oil to Belarus and there is potential for delivery,” Ahmadov noted. He said that the Belarus is currently reviewing various opportunities available on the market, including supplies from SOCAR.

The economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Belarus were also discussed during the meeting between Foreign Minister of Belarus Vladimir Makei and Azerbaijani Ambassador Latif Gandilov on January 15.

On January 14, First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Dmitry Krutoy said that Minsk had sent commercial offers on oil imports to Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Poland, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic countries.

Belarus leader Lukashenko has managed to convince Azerbaijan to join the Belarusian-Venezuelan oil deal through swap contracts. Thus, in place of direct deliveries from Venezuela, since 2011 Belarus has been receiving Azerbaijani oil.

In 2016, Belarus imported a total of 560,000 tones of Azerbaijani oil Azeri Light and CPC Blend, but these deliveries stopped in January 2017.

Meanwhile, Belarus is interested in the North-South project and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, and aims to create the Minsk-Baku railway route. Earlier, Belarusian Railways and Azerbaijan Railways signed an agreement on mutually beneficial cooperation for the interaction of the railways of the 2 countries to contribute to the development of the International North-South Transport Corridor.