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Russia’s Rosneft, Azerbaijan’s SOCAR sign cooperation agreement

The document was signed in the presence of the two presidents

Igor Sechin. Photo ITAR-TASS / Mitya Aleshkovsky

Igor Sechin. Photo ITAR-TASS / Mitya Aleshkovsky

BAKU, August 13 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s oil major Rosneft and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) on Tuesday signed an agreement on cooperation and key terms of oil supplies. The document was signed in the presence of the two presidents, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Ilham Iliyev of Azerbaijan.

Earlier, Itar-Tass reported that Rosneft was interested in having additional oil to be refined at Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery, including oil not from Russian reserves. Now, the refinery’s annual output is four million tonnes and it is planned to expand its output considerably.

A new state-of-the-art facility is being built at the Tuapse refinery, which will make it possible to expand the capacity from five million tonnes to 12 million tonnes, with the output of light oil products at a level of 90 percent. It is planned to complete the modernization of the refinery in 2014.

Apart from that, Rosneft is expanding a sea terminal in Tueapse to increase its capacity from the current ten million tonnes to 17 million tonnes. Hence, the company is interested in increasing the Tuapse refinery’s capacity.

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