A pipeline that pumped almost nothing for four years is about to become the South Caucasus’s most-watched piece of steel. On Monday, Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) and the Georgian government signed an agreement to restart commercial flows through the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, an 837-kilometre line that runs from the Sangachal terminal near Baku to a Black Sea jetty on Georgia’s west coast. The deal sets up an operating contract for the Georgian section and, if Tbilisi’s parliament moves on a fast-tracked bill in the next three weeks, clears the legal runway for the first sustained throughput since spring 2022.
The wider read is bigger than one pipeline. Kazakhstan, which ships roughly four-fifths of its oil through the Russian-routed Caspian Pipeline Consortium, lost an estimated $1.5 billion in January alone after Ukrainian drones hit CPC infrastructure near Novorossiysk. Tbilisi and Baku just gave Astana its first non-Russian artery with serious wall thickness, and they did it while BP, the line’s long-time operator, prepares to hand the keys to a state-owned successor.
What Tbilisi and Baku Signed
The agreement covers the Georgian section of the Western Route Export Pipeline, the formal name carried in the 1996 framework deal. SOCAR Midstream Operations will work alongside the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation on the operating contract, and the pipeline itself remains Georgian state property under the original lease structure. Mariam Kvrivishvili, Georgia’s minister of economy and sustainable development, said the talks produced a commitment to “ensure the resumption of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline” and called the restoration central to “strengthening Georgia’s transit role.”
The Georgian cabinet has submitted a bill to parliament that would synchronise the line’s operating deadlines on both sides of the border. As of April 24, 2026, the original Georgian legal authorisation lapsed; the Azerbaijani section’s permit runs to June 7. The new bill seeks to push Georgia’s authorisation to June 8, giving negotiators a clean window in which to finalise long-form commercial terms expected by October.
- 837 km total pipeline length, with 375 km inside Georgia
- 145,000 barrels per day nameplate capacity, around 7.2 million tonnes per year
- April 1999 commissioning, three years before the larger Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line opened
- 90,000 tonnes pumped in 2024, down from 150,000 tonnes the year before
Why the Restart Lands Now: Kazakhstan’s CPC Problem
The trigger for the agreement is not in Baku or Tbilisi. It is in the Black Sea. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, the conduit for nearly all of Kazakhstan’s seaborne crude, has absorbed three sets of drone strikes in six months: an attack on the Novorossiysk terminal on November 29, 2025, follow-up strikes on tankers leased by KazMunayGas on January 13 and 19, and an April hit that damaged loading equipment and a single-point mooring.
Kazakhstan has been telegraphing a diversification push since the first strike. The volume of Kazakh oil moved through Azerbaijan reached 4 million tonnes in 2025 and could climb to 5 to 6 million tonnes this year, according to Centre for Eastern Studies analysis of the CPC outlook for Kazakhstan’s oil sector. Astana’s longer-term target is more aggressive: 20 million tonnes annually moving westward through the Caspian, which would cut its Russian-routed exports by roughly 80 percent.
That target needs more than the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line, which is already running near capacity with Azeri Light crude. The Baku-Supsa line, with its dedicated Black Sea jetty and idle pumping stations, is the only piece of installed steel that fits the gap without two years of greenfield permitting.
Recent strike pattern that pushed the timeline:
- November 29, 2025: Drone strike on Novorossiysk terminal, CPC loading halted briefly
- January 13 and 19, 2026: Tankers operated by KazMunayGas hit in the Black Sea, estimated Kazakh losses of $1.5 billion that month
- April 2026: CPC’s Black Sea terminal damaged; loading equipment, storage tanks, single-point mooring affected
BP’s Exit Reshapes the Operator Question
BP has run the Western Route line since 1999 through the BP-led Azerbaijan International Operating Company, the same consortium that operates the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field block where the oil originates. According to BP’s Western Route Export pipeline disclosure, the company has held the operator role under a long-term financial lease signed three decades ago. That lease window now closes, and BP is stepping back.
The Two Successors Under Discussion
Two candidates are on the table. The first is SOCAR Midstream, a subsidiary of the same Azerbaijani state company that is signing the new commercial framework. The second is the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation, which already holds title to the Georgian section and has hired outside consultants to assess whether it can stand up an operating function on its own.
The political math favours a split. Giving SOCAR Midstream operator status across the full length puts an Azerbaijani state firm in functional control of Georgian infrastructure, which sits awkwardly with Tbilisi’s sovereignty optics. Giving GOGC the role across the whole line creates a counterparty Astana and BP both have to trust on technical execution. A two-operator structure with SOCAR Midstream running the Azerbaijani section and GOGC running the Georgian section is the most likely landing zone.
What Changes Under State Operators
BP’s commercial discipline kept the line cold for most of the last four years, on the logic that thin spot shipments did not justify the operating cost. State operators have different incentives. SOCAR has a strategic reason to keep the line warm regardless of throughput economics, and GOGC has transit-fee revenue baked into Georgian budget projections. The line is more likely to run, and to run unprofitably for stretches, under either successor than under a publicly listed major answering to quarterly returns.
The Timing Risk
The handover deadline is the end of the first half of 2026, contingent on the operating contract being signed. If the parties cannot agree on cost-allocation terms or liability provisions before BP’s lease lapses, the line falls into a legal gap that no one has the authority to operate. That scenario is the single biggest threat to the announced restart, and it is the one Tbilisi’s fast-tracked bill is designed to prevent.
Capacity, Throughput, and the Gap Between Them
The route’s nameplate capacity is comfortable; the bottleneck has always been tanker availability at Supsa and a fragmented commercial book. The table below puts Baku-Supsa next to its two main neighbours on the Caspian-to-market axis.
| Pipeline | Nameplate capacity (bpd) | 2025 throughput estimate | Primary route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caspian Pipeline Consortium | ~1.5 million | ~1.3 million bpd | Tengiz to Novorossiysk via Russia |
| Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan | ~1.2 million | ~600,000 bpd | Baku to Turkish Mediterranean |
| Baku-Supsa (WREP) | ~145,000 | ~1,800 bpd (spot only) | Baku to Georgian Black Sea |
The gap between Baku-Supsa’s nameplate and its actual flow is the prize. Even a return to 75 percent utilisation would put roughly 110,000 barrels per day onto Georgian export tariffs, which is the assumption sitting under Tbilisi’s revenue forecast for the second half of 2026.
Georgia’s Transit Math
For Tbilisi, the case is fiscal as much as geopolitical. Georgia’s transit revenue from the pipeline collapsed in tandem with the 2022 shutdown, and the country has spent four years watching Azerbaijani oil bypass it on the southern Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route. A live Baku-Supsa line returns transit fees to the budget and lifts Georgia’s leverage in upcoming negotiations on electricity, road transit, and rail capacity with both Baku and Astana.
This will ensure the resumption of oil transit from Central Asia through Georgia to Europe and significantly increase the country’s state budget revenues.
The statement, from Georgia’s Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, frames the restart in revenue terms rather than security terms. That is deliberate. Tbilisi has avoided positioning the pipeline as a sanctions tool against Russia and is keeping its language transactional, which gives SOCAR cover with Moscow and keeps Astana comfortable.
What Could Stall the Restart
The signed framework is not a fait accompli. Four pressure points sit between the May handshake and a tanker loading at Supsa.
- Tanker availability. The 2022 shutdown was triggered by a shortage of ships willing to call at Supsa after Western insurers tightened Black Sea coverage. Coverage costs have eased, but a full commercial book still requires charter commitments that have not been disclosed.
- The operator handover. Failure to agree commercial terms between BP, SOCAR Midstream, and GOGC before mid-year creates a legal vacuum no party can fill on short notice.
- Russia and Iran reaction. Tehran has been signalling a deeper South Caucasus push and Moscow loses transit revenue from every barrel that does not cross its territory. Neither has indicated direct interference, but both have leverage over the wider regional posture, as Riverdale Standard has noted in coverage of Iran’s deepening engagement with Azerbaijan and Georgia.
- Kazakhstan’s commercial commitment. Astana has signalled volume intent without naming the offtakers, the price points, or the rail and Caspian shuttle capacity required to feed Baku-Supsa to nameplate. The infrastructure runs only as fast as the commercial book fills.
Behind those four sit two slower-moving questions. Whether the European Union will treat Kazakh barrels delivered via Georgia as fully Russian-free under its evolving import regime, and whether Brussels will offer financing or political cover for the upgrade work the line will need if Astana’s 20-million-tonne target is to clear. Both answers shape the post-2027 picture and neither is in front of policymakers this quarter.
The bilateral relationship has been on a quiet upswing for two years, with Azerbaijani emergency power supply to Georgia after the April 2025 outage serving as a concrete signal of operational trust between the two state-owned utilities. The pipeline deal builds on that foundation, but it stretches it to a far more politically sensitive surface.
If parliament passes the extension bill and the BP handover lands inside the June window, the first commercial tankers can be loading at Supsa in the third quarter. If either deadline slips, the line goes dormant again until at least 2027, and Kazakhstan’s diversification timeline gets pushed back to match. The next thirty days carry the whole story.
