Vakhtang Chakhnashvili, a member of the supervisory board of Black Sea Petroleum, the company managing the Kulevi oil refinery, says the facility will stop processing Russian oil from late August or early September.
Speaking to TV Pirveli, Chakhnashvili said the company would first receive the full volume of oil required under an existing contract before ending Russian oil processing.
“We made a statement about this, we are going to enter the European markets, and we were already going to [stop processing Russian oil],” Chakhnashvili said.
His comments came after the European Union included the Kulevi oil refinery in its 21st package of sanctions against Russia, although restrictions on the facility will only take effect after six months if its practices do not change.
Chakhnashvili said the EU measure was not a sanction against the company but a preventive measure aimed at limiting Russian oil sales.
“These are neither sanctions nor warnings, these are just preventive measures from the European Union,” he said, adding that the bloc was introducing similar measures against oil refineries.
“If they had evidence, they would definitely sanction us,” Chakhnashvili added.
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