Ukraine ready to consider lower transit charges for Kazakh oil
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 27, 2001
Text of report by Kazakhstan Today news agency web site
Ukraine is ready to consider lowering transit charges for Kazakh oil provided the volume of transported oil is increased, Ukrainian [First] Deputy Prime Minister Oleh Dubyna told journalists. He said the throughput capacity of the Yuzhnyy [oil] terminal on the Black Sea was about 9m tonnes of oil a year.
In response to a question put by Kazakhstan Today, Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Shkolnik said that routes for transporting Kazakh oil through Ukraine's oil pipeline systems had been considered during the fourth session of the joint Kazakh-Ukrainian commission for trade and economic cooperation.
Using the Caspian Pipeline Consortium [CPC] pipeline, we could transport oil from Novorossiysk [the Russian Black Sea port] to the port of Odessa [Ukraine] and study the possibility of using Ukraine's pipelines so as to gain access to the Balkans and Europe, [he said]. "We will consider these options, and instructions to this effect have been given to our specialists on oil transportation," Vladimir Shkolnik said. He said that above all the choice of route would depend on settling the question of mutually advantageous oil transport charges.
The Kazakh ambassador to Ukraine, Ravil Cherdabayev, told Kazakhstan Today in an interview that five years ago the transit of Kazakh oil by the Odessa-Brody [western Ukraine] route through the seaports of Odessa and Feodosiya had stood at 500,000 t. Last year the figure was over 6m tonnes. The volume might decrease after the CPC pipeline is commissioned, the ambassador believes, because a question will arise as to which route is more favourable and attractive, the Turkish one or the Ukrainian one. Astana is now deciding whether to transport oil by tankers through the Bosphorus strait or by the Odessa-Brody pipeline, Ravil Cherdabayev said.
Source: Kazakhstan Today news agency web site, Almaty, in Russian 0725 gmt 26 Sep 01 |
