February 08, 2011 [Reuters] - SOCAR Trading, the Geneva-based trading arm of Azerbaijan's state energy firm, will use a storage tanker for its Azeri Light AZR-E crude blend export in the Asia region, a SOCAR official told Reuters on Monday.
This will increase SOCAR’s exposure to Asian markets after the company also made an investment to build a 650,000 cubic metre oil storage terminal in the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, expected to be operational in about a year.
The new storage tanker with 150,000 to 160,000 deadweight tonnes will be anchored in Singapore. SOCAR will rent it from PTT, a Thai company.
“In around a month we plan to use the vessel,” the SOCAR official said.
He added that the oil from the facility will be loaded to Aframax types of vessels with 80,000 to 120,000 deadweight tonnes and further shipped to the regional refineries, which have contracts with SOCAR Trading.
A SOCAR Trading’s official told Reuters last week the company might suspend cooperation with an oil refinery in Egypt amid political unrest in the Middle East country.
SOCAR Trading has been delivering 1.0 million-1.5 million barrels of crude a month to the refinery “Midor” in Alexandria for further sale of oil products to Egypt’s main oil corporation EGPC for the last eight months.
But later the company released a statement confirming “the full continuation of its operations in Egypt with EGPC and the ‘Midor’ refinery.”
SOCAR Trading’s Singapore office, which opened in May 2009, had accounted for about 20 percent of the crude sales into Asia last year, with the rest being sold by its Geneva headquarters, and had also traded some oil products in small volumes via third-party contracts.
