Azerbaijan intercepts Armenian missile fired at oil pipelines in Khizi region
By Ayya Lmahamad
Armenian armed forces continue to subject Azerbaijani settlements and strategic facilities to missile and heavy artillery attacks in violation of the international law and the Geneva Convention.
On October 18, Armenian launched an attack on non-military crude oil and condensate pipeline located in Azerbaijan’s Khizi region, 300 km away from the conflict zone, using massively destructive methods of warfare, Prosecutor’s General Office has reported.
As a result of neutralization by Azerbaijan Army air defense forces, some of the explosive particles inside the rocket were scattered over a distance of 250 meters from the part of the Baku- Novorossiysk oil pipeline, passing through Khizi’s Sitalchay village, the report said.
It should be noted that this pipeline is of strategic importance in Azerbaijan-Russia economic cooperation.
The attack on Baku-Novorossiysk comes after almost two weeks when Armenia attacked the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that takes Azerbaijani oil to European markets. The cluster bombed fired at BTC on October 6, landed 10 meters away from the pipeline. Over 300 cluster bomblets ejected around as a result of the attack.
Prosecutor’s General Office said that by attacking Azerbaijan’s energy pipelines, Armenia seeks to deliberately destroy a large amount of infrastructure facilities, creating dangerous conditions for crude oil and condensate export pipelines, the destruction of which could cause significant material consequences.
Investigation has been launched into the incident.
The Baku- Novorossiysk oil pipeline transports Caspian oil to the Novorossiysk cross port of the Black Sea. At February 18, 1996, in Moscow, an agreement was signed to transport Azerbaijani oil through the territory of the Russian Federation through the port of Chepomorskiy Novorossiysk.
Filling the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline with oil started in October 1996. The pipeline has a maximum capacity of 105,000 barrels per day.
The pipeline has three pump stations - Sangachal, Sumgayit and Siyazan. The diameter of the pipeline is 530 mm, and length of the pipeline is 1,330 km, out of which 231 km is Azerbaijani part.
Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) exported 278,910 tons of oil through Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline during the period of January-September 2020.
Armenian armed forces launched a large-scale operation in the front-line zone on September 27 at 6 am, shelling the positions of the Azerbaijani army from large-calibre weapons, mortars, and artillery installations of various calibres.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.
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Ayya Lmahamad is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @AyyaLmahamad
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