Hungary’s MOL Group ships Azerbaijani crude to Bratislava refinery

Hungary’s MOL Group has said it has started delivery of crude from a field in Azerbaijan to its refinery in Bratislava (Pozsony).

The Azeri Light is from a field in which MOL owns a 9.57 per cent stake, according to Daily News Hungary.

The 90,000 tons of seaborne crude has arrived in Croatia and is being delivered to the Slovnaft refinery via the Adria pipeline.

The 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 it owns.

The shipment was transported from the Sangachal oil terminal near Baku to Ceyhan via the BTC oil pipeline, which is also partly owned by the Mol Group.

The processing of Azeri Light extracted from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field, of which 9.57 per cent is owned by Mol, will start in April.

“This is another important milestone in Slovnaft’s and MOL Group’s journey toward greater crude sourcing flexibility amid European sanctions prohibiting the export of petroleum products from EU member states,” MOL Group said.

“MOL continues to import Russian Export Blend via the Druzhba pipeline, as it is convinced that the best way to guarantee the security of the fuel supply in the Central and Eastern European region is to keep traditional supply channels intact while exploring and securing alternative ones,” it added.

The Mol Group is becoming an increasingly important economic link between Azerbaijan and East-Central Europe. In 2020, the company acquired a stake in the ACG oil field, one of the flagships of the Azerbaijani economy, and an 8.9 per cent stake in the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline.