KazMunaiGas buys Black Sea Batumi oil terminal

TBILISI, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Kazakh state energy firm KazMunaiGas has become the sole owner of Georgia's Black Sea oil terminal of Batumi by buying stakes from its partners, a seller said on Wednesday.

KazMunaiGas has been seeking to acquire assets outside Kazakhstan as its production is expected to grow steeply in coming years due to commissioning of new fields, including the giant Kashagan Caspian Sea oilfield.

Private investment company Greenoak, which spent several years turning Batumi from a small outlet into one of the biggest oil ports on the Black Sea, said all the partners in Batumi had sold their stakes to KazMunaiGas.

The partners, which included French bank BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA), jointly controlled the terminal before the sale. KazMunaiGas and BNP Paribas were not immediately available for comments.

Greenoak also held the Batumi port under a long-term lease, which will be transferred to KazMunaiGas. Greenoak said it would now manage the terminal and the port for KazMunaiGas.

Greenoak did not disclose the value of the deals. In 2006, it paid $92 million for the rights to manage the port for 49 years. It says it had also invested more than $200 million to upgrade the terminal's capacity to 15 million tonnes per year.

Batumi exported 9.5 million tonnes of crude oil and refined products in 2007, down from 11.7 million tonnes in 2006, as some volumes were re-routed to the new Baku-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey.

Batumi gets crude and refined products by rail.

Some volumes are shipped across the Caspian Sea in small tankers, unloaded in the Azeri port of Baku and then sent by rail to Batumi for re-export to the Mediterranean.

Some volumes are sent directly from Azerbaijan by rail, including from the giant BP-led (BP.L) Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli project, mostly by U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil (XOM.N). (Writing by Margarita Antidze, editing by Anthony Barker)