November 10, 2011 [Reuters] - Azeri state energy company SOCAR and Swiss trading house Aurora Progress plan to launch an oil terminal in the UAE’s port of Fujairah, a major tanker refueling center, at the end of November, a SOCAR official said.
The terminal is expected to be used for oil products sold in the region, not Azeri-refined products. It will be managed by joint company SOCAR-Aurora.
“We plan to launch the first facility of an oil terminal in Fujairah with a capacity of 150,000 tons per year at the end of November,” Adnan Akhmedzade, head of marketing at SOCAR, said.
Total annual capacity of the terminal is 600,000 tons.
Akhmedzade said that reaching total capacity would require two more stages, which would start in December and would take six months.
The terminal will include 20 reservoirs for shipment and storage of refined oil products.
SOCAR also has a sub-rental agreement on part of a major oil storage facility in South Korea, controls the Petkim chemical complex in Turkey and purchases oil refining capacity in Europe.
Azerbaijan ships its oil and oil products via five main routes — Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, Georgia’s Supsa, Kulevi and Batumi ports, and the port of Ceyhan in Turkey.
