SOCAR"s investments outside of azerbaijan reached about $3 billion

At present investments of SOCAR into the projects outside of the country total $2.9 billion, Suleyman Gasymov, SOCAR Vice President for Economic Affairs, made the statement.

He said these funds have been invested into SOCAR's projects, which have been implemented in Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, Switzerland, UAE and etc. "For instance, cost of Star project, which is implemented by SOCAR's daughter company in Turkey, is $5 billion. 41.5% of these investments fall to SOCAR. These funds will be spent gradually till completion of the work on the project," Gasymov explained.

For the first time SOCAR started investing capital outside of Azerbaijan in 2007. That time it created SOCAR Georgia Petroleum company, which has broken into the retail oil products sale market in the neighboring country. Later on it created SOCAR Georgia Gas company, which was in charge of gas distribution in Georgian regions, and in 2008 it created Black Sea Terminal company, which manages the Black Sea terminal in Kulevi. In May 2008 SOCAR bought a control stock of Turkish state petrochemical holding Petkim for $2.05 billion. In 2009 SOCAR broke into the oil products retail sale market of Ukraine and after a year entered into Romania. In November 2011 it concluded a deal with ExxonMobil to buy 100% shares of its daughter company in Switzerland, which is involved in oil products retail sale. Since February 2008 SOCAR Trading company has been operating in Switzerland.

According to SOCAR specialists' forecasted, after 5 years total cost of the projects implemented by SOCAR in Turkey will reach $17 billion.-0-