Wednesday, 04 November 2015 18:41
TBILISI: Shipments of crude oil and refined oil products from Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi between January and October were down 11.2 percent from a year earlier, a senior official at the terminal said on Wednesday.
Shipments declined in January and February, with the re-routing of some oil shipments to the Baku-Tbilisi Ceyhan pipeline. They rose in March before declining in April, May, June, July, August and again in September.
In October, they rose on both a monthly and annual basis.
The Batumi terminal, operated by Kazakh state energy company KazMunaiGas , shipped 4.355 million tonnes of oil and oil products last year, down from 5.634 million in 2013.
Shipments in January to October were 3.101 million tonnes, down from 3.491 million a year earlier, said the official, who asked not to be named. He gave no reasons for the fall.
Shipments in October were 368,148 tonnes, up from 156,580 in September and from 266,790 a year earlier.
Crude and refined oil products from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are shipped out of Georgia’s Black Sea ports of Batumi, Supsa, Poti and the terminal in Kulevi.
Some products are shipped across the Caspian Sea in small tankers, unloaded in the Azeri port of Baku and then sent by rail to Georgian ports for export to the Mediterranean.
