Slovakian refinery to start processing Azerbaijani oil next month

The Slovnaft refinery owned by Hungarian MOL Group in Bratislava, Slovakia, will start processing Azerbaijani oil in April, Azernews reports.

The 90,000 tons of seaborne crude from Azerbaijan’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block was transported from the Sangachal oil terminal near Baku to Ceyhan via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The shipment has arrived in Croatia and is being delivered to the Slovnaft refinery via the Adria pipeline.

MOL Group’s priority is to increase the flexibility of oil procurement. In doing so, MOL has created a fully integrated value chain, which means it will be able to sell petroleum products processed in its own refinery from oil extracted from a field in which it is a shareholder.

MOL Group holds 9.57 percent share in Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block.

Total ACG production for the full year of 2022 was on average about 415,400 barrels per day (b/d) (about 152 million barrels or 20 million tonnes in total) from the Chirag (25,200 b/d), Central Azeri (104,100 b/d), West Azeri (106,400 b/d), East Azeri (64,000 b/d), Deepwater Gunashli (76,300 b/d) and West Chirag (39,400 b/d) platforms.

The total volume of oil production in Azerbaijan in 2022 amounted to 32.6 million tons. During the reporting period, the country exported 26.3 million tons of oil.