Despite shipowners' concerns about the safety of approaching the Russian port, Azerbaijan is prepared to fulfil its responsibilities to transit the amounts of oil agreed with Russia's oil pipeline operator Transneft through the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline.

"Oil exports from Novorossiysk are proceeding according to plan. Two tankers departed Novorossiysk with our oil in February, each carrying 80,000 tonnes, and another cargo of 80,000 tonnes is expected for March," a source at Azerbaijan's national energy business SOCAR told the Tribune.

80,000 tonnes of Azeri oil were shipped from Novorossiysk to the international market in January.

SOCAR announced last year that it aimed to ship 1.209 million tonnes of oil via Russia in 2022, up from 1.09 million tonnes in 2021.

SOCAR has applied to transport 340,000 tonnes of oil through the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline in the second quarter of 2022, according to the SOCAR source.

"Some adjustments in our duties for oil transit via the Russian Federation can only take place in the case of force majeure, which there is presently none," he explained.

Azerbaijan has been pumping oil through a 1,330-kilometer pipeline from Baku to Novorossiysk, a port on Russia's Black Sea coast, since 1997. It also sells oil via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline to Georgia and Turkey, as well as via rail and the Baku-Supsa pipeline to Georgia.

SOCAR halted shipments to Novorossiysk in March 2019, claiming scheduled repair on the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, despite conflicts between the two parties over shipping quantities and costs, according to analysts. Following the prohibition of transit via Russia, the business redirected oil volumes to the BTC pipeline. Shipments started in July 2020, with a total of 613,029 tonnes of oil transiting via Russia from Azerbaijan in 2020.

SOCAR signed a deal with Transneft to carry more than one million tonnes of oil through the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline in 2021, however shipments were halted again in January 2021.