BAKU: Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR shipped 898,480 tonnes of oil via Russia in the first nine months of this year, down 18 percent from the 1.1 million tonnes shipped in the same period last year, it said on Monday.
The decline was due to SOCAR being unable to export via the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline for the first two months of the year.
It resumed exports via the pipeline on March 1 after signing an agreement in late February with Russian pipeline monopoly AK Transneft, ending a three-month gap while they negotiated a new deal.
Azerbaijan ships only a very small proportion of its oil exports via Russia, using routes through Georgia and Turkey for the bulk of its crude shipments.
SOCAR expects to ship 1.3 million tonnes of Azeri crude through Russia this year, up from 1.27 million tonnes in 2015 and 1.02 million tonnes in 2014.
SOCAR's crude has a lower sulphur content than Russia's Urals blend.
The company receives crude from Transneft to fill its loading slots at the Novorossiisk oil terminal.
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