Azerbaijan ships 164,900 T of oil via Russia in Sept

• Azerbaijan shipped 164,900 tonnes of oil via Russia in September, two months after it resumed shipments after a four month break due to pipeline maintenance.
• Oil exports via Russia in January-September of this year totalled 489,600 tonnes.

BAKU: Azerbaijan shipped 164,900 tonnes of oil via Russia in September, two months after it resumed shipments after a four month break due to pipeline maintenance, state oil company SOCAR said on Wednesday.

SOCAR stopped supplies to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk after planned maintenance on the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline started on March 1, and cancelled the loading of two 80,000-tonne cargoes.

The company diverted crude flows to its own Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline after the suspension of transit via Russia.

Oil exports via Russia in January-September of this year totalled 489,600 tonnes.

SOCAR plans to ship 85,000 tonnes of crude oil via Russia in October and aims to transport through Baku-Novorossiisk 825,000 tonnes in total in 2019, a source at SOCAR told Reuters.

SOCAR shipped 1.299 million tonnes of oil via Russia in 2018, down from 1.576 million tonnes in 2017.

Azerbaijan sends only a small portion of its oil exports via Russia, using routes through Georgia and Turkey for the bulk of its crude shipments.

SOCAR's crude has a lower sulphur content than Russia's Urals blend. The company receives crude from Russian pipeline monopoly AK Transneft to fill its loading slots at the Novorossiisk oil terminal.