The company plans to increase its shipments via Russia to 1.5 million tonnes in 2017, 325,000 tonnes of which will be shipped in the first quarter of this year.
SOCAR shipped 1.21 million tonnes of oil via Russia last year, down 4.8 percent from the 1.27 million tonnes shipped in 2015.
SOCAR had not been shipping oil via the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline in January and February last year and resumed exports on March 1 after signing an agreement in late February with Russian pipeline monopoly AK Transneft.
Azerbaijan ships only a very small proportion of its oil exports via Russia, using routes through Georgia and Turkey for the bulk of its crude shipments.
SOCAR's crude has a lower sulphur content than Russia's Urals blend. The company receives crude from Transneft to fill its loading slots at the Novorossiisk oil terminal.