Exports of Turkmen oil via Russia's Black sea port of Novorossiisk will resume in February, four market sources said.
Turkmenistan stopped transit of its oil via Russia in 2016 and has been exporting all its crude via the Azeri Caspian port of Baku.
Pumping Turkmen oil through the Makhachkala-Novorossiisk pipeline could add as much as 200,000 tonnes of crude per month into Russia’s Transneft system. Turkmenistan is currently shipping oil via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port.
Trader Vitol has already started shipments of Turkmen oil to Russia’s Caspian port Makhachkala, two sources said.
Turkmen crude loadings from Novorossiisk could reach up to 200,000 tonnes in February, the sources added.
(Reuters, Reporting by Olga Yagova, Alla Afanasyeva and Gleb Gorodyankin Editing by David Goodman)