SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) has been actively cooperating with Russian companies in the oil sector and intends to further developm cooperation in this field. The vice-president of the company Nuru Guliyev and Tofig Gahramanov spoke about this when answering questions of a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza during a meeting with Russian journalists.
Nuru Guliyev recalled that SOCAR has been operating in the Russian Federation for several years. "Since mid-2013 SOCAR opened a representative office in Russia ‘SOCAR Russia.’ This step should promote business development in your country and SOCAR’s relations with Russian companies,’’ he said.
‘‘Naturally, partnerships with business from Russia were established much earlier,’’ Guliyev said. "If we take into account historical facts, it is clear that we have been cooperating with Russian companies for a long time. Since 1997, Azerbaijan has been exporting its oil to world markets, so from that moment we started cooperating with the company ‘Transneft.’ ‘Baku-Novorossiysk’ is one of the three pipelines that allows us to export Azerbaijani oil. So we attach great strategic importance to this cooperation," the vice-president of SOCAR said.
"In addition, in recent years we have been cooperating in the trading field. We buy Russian oil products and Russian oil. This year, about 500,000 tons of the Russian oil were purchased from LUKOIL for further transport with the help of the ‘Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan' pipeline. "Overall, we aim for further cooperation with Russia and we intend to develop our cooperation,’’ Nuru Guliyev noted.
Vice-president of SOCAR Tofig Gahramanov named exact figures, describing the depth of contacts with Russian business. "Over the past year and a half, we have imported products of 63 Russian companies and supplier plants for the needs of SOCAR amounting to $60 million. In particular, we buy various types of equipment, materials, pipes, compressors, valves for oil and gas," he noted.
"We have very good relations with Russian companies. Just a few days ago, our delegation visited a Moscow refinery plant. Now it is being modernized and reconstructed.’’
In addition, Qahramanov reported that some time ago the project SOCAR Polymer received a serious investment loan from ‘Gazprombank’ for 10 years. ‘Gazprombank’ allocated about $ 490 million for the project SOCAR Polymer. The talks were held a few months ago. Some part of this amount will be directed to purchase equipment from the Russian factories," - he said.
Nuru Guliyev also said that SOCAR is planning to work more closely with ‘Rosneft.’ "We intend to deepen our cooperation with ‘Rosneft.’ Currently, we cooperate in the direction of trading, as well as supplement and procurement of oil. At the same time, we are also considering the possibility of cooperation in other areas, for example, in an exchange of assets. In general, we are working to extend bilateral cooperation,’’ he said.
