Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan Discuss New Kazakh Oil Routes

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are discussing the possibility of opening new routes to transport Kazakh oil.

"Yesterday we held talks with Azerbaijan's national oil and gas company, and agreed to carry out research on transporting Kazakh oil through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea," the chairman of the Kazenergy association, Timur Kulibayev, told a news conference held within the Kazakh energy week in Astana today.

Kulibayev said that the matter concerned possible construction of a new pipeline within the existing Baku-Supsa corridor.

"We have discussed with our Azerbaijani counterparts how much oil will be produced in Azerbaijan and how much capacity will be available for Kazakh oil in the BTC system (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan - Interfax-Kazakhstan). We see that there is an additional need for additional facilities for transportation (of Kazakh oil - Interfax-Kazakhstan) through Azerbaijan and other countries," Kulibayev said.

Kulibayev also said that it was too early to speak about the capacity and other features of a project to build a new pipeline within the Baku-Supsa corridor; over 50m tonnes of oil is expected to be extracted in Kashagan.

BBC Monitoring. Copyright BBC.