SOCAR and Rosneft to set up joint venture on parity basis

Rosneft and SOCAR have agreed to set up a joint venture on a parity basis to implement the projects for development of oil and gas in various countries, including Russia and Azerbaijan, as well as joint use of various pipelines and terminals, reads the statement of Rosneft posted on the Russian company's web site.

Rosneft and SOCAR Presidents Sechin and Abdullayev have evaluated the signed agreement as a new serious step towards a wide-scale expanding of the Russian-Azerbaijani intergovernmental agreement in the energy field.

The agreement will allow the both companies expanding their activities, getting access to new markets and resources and optimizing deliveries of oil and oil products at the expense of joint use of the existing infrastructure.

* SOCAR is the shareholder of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline with 25% share. The daily capacity of oil pumping via BTC is 1.2 million barrels of oil. At present oil extracted on the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli bloc of fields in the Caspian Sea and condensate extracted on the Shah-Deniz field and Turkmenistan oil is exported via BTC.

SOCAR also holds 10% share in the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum gas pipeline with the capacity of up to 8 billion cub.m. a year, via which gas is delivered from the Shah-Deniz field to Georgia and Turkey. SOCAR is also operator of the Azerbaijani section of the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline. In addition, SOCAR owns a terminal in the Georgian Kulevi port with the capacity of 10 million tons of cargo a year, including 3 million tons of oil, 3 million tons of diesel fuel and 4 million tons of black oil.

Since 2012 SOCAR is the operator of trans-Anadolu (TANAP) gas pipeline in Turkey, where it holds 80% share. SOCAR has got 20% share in the trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP), which will be launched since 2019 to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe.-0-