SOCAR implements first deliveries of fuel from Azerbaijan to Ukraine via Bulgaria

The first deliveries of SOCAR fuel from Azerbaijan through Bulgaria were made to Ukraine, there were also deliveries from Italy, Igor Orlov, retail trade director of SOCAR Energy Ukraine, a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) in Ukraine, said in an interview with Ukrainian media, Report informs.

“Many people think that SOCAR delivers fuel from Azerbaijan, but this is not true - the delivery was too expensive. We had a supplier - Orlen - we have been cooperating since the first day of SOCAR’s work in Ukraine. The lack of the necessary volumes of fuel in Europe made us look for alternative,” Orlov said.

Regarding the measures taken because of the fuel crisis, he stated that, first of all, Europe was not ready for such volumes of fuel supplies.

“With the beginning of the invasion, Belarus (from where most of the fuel was supplied to Ukraine) was closed, there were no other channels. Everyone was drawn to Europe, and the fuel there turned out to be much less than the warring country needed. The hot summer hampered logistics, as the high air temperature (over +35 degrees) does not allow transporting and unloading fuel tanks. All this caused delays in the appearance of fuel at filling stations,” Orlov explained.

In his opinion, the most difficult thing was when the entire market was faced with a shortage and a restructuring of logistics: “We did not expect that the ports would not work. This caused certain difficulties.

We had such a system: there had to be fuel according to our contractual obligations - which companies had already bought from us at that time to ensure their work. This includes retail, logistics, and other large clients. We also had to have fuel available for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and doctors. Of course, we left the volume for individuals who had to leave the cities. Now we can say that we are quite well prepared, and with proper planning, the correct limits that we prepared daily for each individual filling station, we were able to fulfill our obligations, help the state, and refuel vehicles of guests who urgently needed fuel.”

Orlov added that after the first shelling of oil depots, the task was set to deliver fuel to the filling stations as much as possible, to the tanks that are at the gas stations: “Constantly transporting fuel or storing it in a fuel truck is not safe, therefore we ‘refueled’ our filling stations to the maximum.

At this point, there was already an active demand for fuel. In addition to retail, we had to fulfill commitments to our corporate clients, who have large contracts with us. We delivered petrol and diesel fuel to their tanks for storage.

In terms of fuel supplies, it was a little easier for us, because, unlike many market players, all of our partners were international. We did not take anything from Kremenchug (the Kremenchug Oil Refinery, before the war, the only major fuel producer in Ukraine, is not functioning due to destruction by missile strikes). From Belarus, we imported only A-92, but this type of fuel holds a small part in the structure of our sales.

It is no secret that most of the fuel supplies go by sea. In this regard, we underestimated that the port may not work. However, thanks to the team, we were able to quickly reconfigure the logistics. We weren’t accustomed to this, we had to bring fuel with our own and rented car carriers and wagons, but thankfully at the time of the invasion we had a lot of fuel at oil depots.

Somewhere until the end of March, we were selling ‘leftovers.’ And this despite the fact that the flow of people who traveled at 5 a.m. on February 24 was so huge that sales on that day equaled the weekly volume before the invasion. And this is taking into account restrictions on the volume of refueling in one tank, the number of filler nozzles, queues and other things."

The representative office of SOCAR was opened in Ukraine in 2008. In 2009, the company acquired about 20 gas stations of the Tala-Neft network in the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, as well as a large Rassvet oil depot in the Odesa region. In 2010-2011, it took control of the filling networks ONIO (four filling stations in Kyiv and the region) and GFC (Lviv region).

In August 2012, SOCAR received permission from the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine to purchase 26 filling stations and one oil depot of the Kalina group. The network operates 57 filling stations in Ukraine, including two oil tankers, Baku-1 in Kyiv and Ganja in Odesa. Since the end of 2016, the company has been trading natural gas in Ukraine.

SOCAR Energy Ukraine currently owns 57 filling stations in Ukraine.