Kazakhstan and Turkey have agreed to build an oil refinery on the Turkish shore of the Black Sea to process Kazakh crude, the Central Asian state's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Monday.
In comments posted on his official Website (www.akorda.kz), the Kazakh leader said he had made the agreement with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week.
"An important agreement has been made for Kazakh investors to build an oil refinery on the Black Sea coast in Turkey," Nazarbayev said.
"So we can transport crude oil from (the Russian port of) Novorossiisk to Turkey and sell the refined product there." He did not name the investors or give a timescale.
Nazarbayev said the refinery would help ease pressure on the Bosphorus straits as greater quantities of oil seek a route to world markets from the Caspian, some of which will travel through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's expanded line to Novorossiisk.