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Azeri oil will flow via Odessa-Brody at the year-end

25 August 2008 16:21 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev â€“ APA-Economics. Russiaâ€™s reverse transportation of oil southward to Odessa may be terminated this year, Ukrainian media reports said.
According to a decree issued by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the pipeline will start pumping crude from Odessa into the Druzhba pipeline by the end of 2008.
Ukraine plans to fill the pipeline with crude from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
The 667km pipeline, built in 2001, is designed to transport the Caspian oil to Europe. The $200 million pipeline was not used because there is no pipe connection between Ukraine and Poland.
It remained largely idle amid political bickering over its use until 2004, when Russian TNK-BP started to use reverse transportation of Russian oil southward to Odessa for export.
Kiev has promised to return to the pipelineâ€™s original design and begin shipping oil from Caspian Sea nations such as Azerbaijan northward from Odessa to Brody, near the Polish border.