Eurasia Press & News
In January 2026, Georgia exported $56 million worth of allegedly domestic petroleum products—a 3,300% increase compared to the previous year. Petroleum products were the second-largest export. The unprecedented trade success is attributed to the opening of a new refinery in Kulevi, which received its first oil tanker in October 2025. The family that owns the refinery has ties to Russia, and the oil is supplied to it by vessels from a “shadow fleet.” However, there is no publicly available evidence that oil refining has actually begun at the refinery. Experts suspect that the Kulevi refinery is selling Russian petroleum products as its own. All this has put the Georgian port at risk of EU sanctions, which are currently being blocked by Hungary and Slovakia.
Ex-model with an oil refinery
Speaking at the presentation of the Kulevi oil refinery project on the Black Sea coast in October 2024, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze promised that the new refinery would increase Georgia’s export potential, improve its external trade balance, and stabilize its currency.
Sitting in the front row with Kobakhidze was Maka Asatiani, the owner of Black Sea Petroleum, the company that undertook the construction of the refinery. Asatiani is often referred to as a designer, but the media has provided virtually no information about her design work since the early 2000s . A former model , the daughter of famous Georgian footballer Kakha Asatiani and the wife of Georgian footballer Merab Zhordania, for many years she was a staple of the gossip columns rather than the business press.
After her divorce from Zhordania, Asatiani married Kote Gogelia, a Russian businessman of Georgian descent. The couple and their three children (Asatiani has two sons from his first marriage and one from his marriage to Gogelia) lived in Switzerland and Spain. In 2009, upon returning to Georgia, Asatiani described living the lifestyle of a housewife and growing cucumbers in her garden.
After her marriage to Gogelia, Asatiani rarely appeared in public, but she did pursue business interests, including in the media. However, her company, AKA, a Mercedes dealership in Georgia, was listed as a family business, while her husband was more interested in her stake in the Maestro TV channel . In 2019, “Georgia’s most beautiful woman,” as the tabloids often called her, opened the Darial concept store in Barcelona with designer Jaba Diassamidze. However, in March 2022, the store announced its closure due to the “difficult global situation.” Six months later, Asatiani founded Black Sea Petroleum in Georgia to build a refinery in Kulevi, which is owned by the Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR.
At the 2024 presentation of the plant project, Kobakhidze and Asatiani’s speeches were heard in the front row by members of the businesswoman’s family—Kakhi Zhordania’s eldest son and Kote Gogelia’s husband. Gogelia is considered the beneficial owner of Black Sea Petrolium. In Russia, he founded the companies Nefteresurs and Arktik Bunker, which were involved in fuel transportation.
Asatiani’s son, Kakhi Zhordania, is also connected to the Russian oil business. According to Agency , from 2016 to 2023, Kakhi owned the Russian oil trader Oil Energy Group, and since 2018, he has held a 25% stake in SDO-Logistic. 51% of the latter is owned by Sergei Alekseyev, the son of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev , First Deputy Chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU). Vladimir Alekseyev was recently the target of an assassination attempt . Before founding his own company, Alekseyev Jr. worked at RussNeft, founded in 2002 by businessman Mikhail Gutseriev. RussNeft became the first company to deliver oil to Kulevi in October 2025.
Achieved with government support
Corruption researcher Besik Donadze, speaking to The Insider, emphasizes that Black Sea Petroleum’s owners represent Russian rather than Georgian businesses:
“They didn’t make money in Georgia. They made it in Russia, brought it to Georgia, and started a business.” The expert notes that the refinery project, which had been in the planning stages for about ten years, began quickly: “Obtaining licenses and construction permits—everything went very quickly.”
“This achievement would not have been possible without the effective work and significant support of the government, as well as the participation of state and local institutions,” Maka Asatiani admitted at the presentation of the refinery project.
Corruption investigators in Georgia confirm that the construction of the Black Sea Petroleum refinery clearly has interests of the Georgian ruling elite. The investment required for the first phase of construction was estimated at $110 million (the entire project budget was estimated at $700 million). The project was financed by the Georgian Development Fund and several commercial banks, including Cartu Bank, formerly owned by Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the Georgian Dream party.
“The Georgia Development Fund is a private fund controlled by the government. It invests in sectors the government believes need stimulation. This means the prime minister signed off on the investment in Kulevi. So the government can’t claim it’s a purely private initiative,” Sandro Kevkhishvili, program manager for Transparency International (TI) Georgia, explained to The Insider.
Commenting on his involvement in the Cartu Bank project, Kevkhishvili recalls that after the imposition of US sanctions against Ivanishvili in 2024, the bank’s shares were redistributed. Formally, the billionaire’s son, Uta Ivanishvili, retained a 35% stake (the remaining owners are not disclosed). However, according to the expert, “control over the brand remains,” and “given his de facto control over the ruling party, it can be said that Ivanishvili has a personal interest in the project’s success.”
Besik Donadze also points out that Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Levan Davitashvili , who was involved in approving the refinery project, resigned in 2025. He soon became Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Black Sea Petroleum.
Donadze is confident that the construction of the oil refinery in Kulevi primarily serves Russia’s interests, but that conducting similar operations in Georgia is impossible “if Ivanishvili’s team is not interested.”
Georgian oil to Kulevi
Georgia began increasing its imports of oil and petroleum products from Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Tbilisi did not join the sanctions, as Georgian importers found Russian oil profitable amid rising global prices.
According to the Georgian National Statistics Office (Geostat), in 2021, Georgia imported 225,000 tons of petroleum products from Russia worth $135 million. In 2022, this volume nearly tripled, reaching 658,000 tons worth $622 million. In 2023, the total volume reached 771,000 tons, and in 2024, 699,000 tons. Thus, the share of Russian petroleum products in Georgian imports increased from 16.4% in 2021 to 47% in 2022, and then decreased to 40% in 2024.
According to Georgian investigative journalists, official data paints an incomplete picture. In early 2025, IFact analyzed information from international trade databases and found that since the start of the war in Ukraine, Georgia’s oil exports to European countries had increased nearly 15-fold. However, Geostat data far from fully reflected these imports. For example, according to official information, no oil was exported from Georgia to Spain in 2023–2024, but according to international databases, Spain imported 99,000 tons of oil from Georgia, worth €49 million.
Investigators noted similar discrepancies in the figures for Greece, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Geostat attributed the discrepancies to possible trilateral trade with resale, where, for example, Georgia buys oil from Russia and sells it to another country, but the cargo doesn’t enter a Georgian port (and thus isn’t included in Georgian statistics). However, according to international standards, the country of origin should be the country where the oil was either produced or refined, not the country from which it was delivered to the destination country. According to trade database data, much more “Georgian” oil and petroleum products are sold in Europe than Georgia is capable of producing.
Russian oil can be “Georgianized” in various ways. According to investigators, some of the oil is simply issued with new documents. Another portion is mixed with oil from other suppliers to make its origin untraceable. Still another portion is refined and exported as Georgian oil. IFact analyzed Georgian shipments to Switzerland and Greece from ZD Oil Company and Rustavoil , which also purchase Russian crude.
However, the opening of the Kulevi Oil Refinery could radically change the situation. This refinery is the only full-cycle crude oil refining facility in the country. Initially, the refinery’s capacity is expected to reach 1.2 million tons of crude oil per year, and subsequently increase to 3 million tons (ZD Oil Company’s capacity is 130,000 tons , while Rustavoil’s is 180,000 tons ).
Export growth by 3300%
On October 6, 2025, less than a year after the refinery project was unveiled, the tanker Kayseri delivered 105,000 tons of oil to Kulevi for the first time, carrying Russian company RussNeft. Georgian authorities did not deny this, citing that neither RussNeft nor Kayseri were under sanctions. Only three weeks after calling at Kulevi, the tanker was added to the EU sanctions list as part of the “shadow fleet,” and on February 25, 2026, to the UK’s list . Two months after the delivery, the UK imposed sanctions against RussNeft.
During the same period, in October 2025, a rapid increase in crude oil imports from Russia began, which was actively reported by Russian state media. In 2024, Georgia imported only 10.5 tons of crude oil from Russia, worth $6 million. In 2025, Georgia imported 225,000 tons of crude oil from Russia, worth $96 million. Moreover, these 225,000 tons occurred in the last three months, when the Kulevo Oil Refinery began operating.
At the beginning of 2026, Georgia’s oil product exports showed explosive growth. On February 19, Geostat published foreign trade data for January. Oil and oil products ranked second in export volume. In the first month of 2026, Georgia exported $58.7 million worth of oil products, accounting for 12.2% of its total exports. This represents a 400% increase compared to January 2025 (when Georgia sold $11.71 million worth of oil products abroad, or 2.9% of its total exports).
Of this total ($56 million), 95% were exports of domestically produced petroleum products. This figure also began to increase in the last quarter of 2025, and compared to January 2025, the increase was over 3,300%.
Experts note that the sharp rise in performance coincides with the possible launch of Black Sea Petroleum’s Kulevi refinery. Furthermore, there are no other refineries in the country with comparable capacity. But this success story has its pitfalls.
Reason for sanctions
After Reuters reported the arrival of the first tanker, the Kayseri, at the Kulevi terminal, investigators from IFact analyzed information on other vessels calling at Georgian ports in 2024–2025. It turned out that at least 19 vessels could be considered part of a “shadow fleet” based on a number of indicators: they are older vessels with opaque ownership structures, lack Western insurance, frequently change flags, and have been implicated in AIS manipulation , coordinate falsification, and transhipment in international waters.
The “shadow fleet” is also used to deliver crude oil to the Kulevi Oil Refinery. On January 8, the tanker NOSTOS, built in 2003, delivered a cargo of crude oil to the port of Kulevi from Novorossiysk. According to the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate, the vessel is being used to evade sanctions. Georgian authorities confirmed to Batumelebi that the NOSTOS’s cargo was destined for the Kulevi Oil Refinery, emphasizing that neither the vessel nor its owner or operator were under international sanctions at the time of delivery.
For its involvement in the transportation of crude oil and petroleum products produced in Russia or exported by Russian vessels using irregular and high-risk shipping methods, the port of Kulevi narrowly escaped inclusion in the EU’s 20th round of sanctions. Georgian authorities have insisted that nothing “contrary to sanctions policy” is happening in Kulevi. Adding Kulevi to the EU sanctions list would be the first time a Georgian infrastructure facility has been sanctioned, but Hungary and Slovakia have so far blocked this proposal.
The imposition of sanctions could threaten the interests of not only Georgia but also Azerbaijan, as the Kulevi terminal is owned by SOCAR. According to Bloomberg , Italy, which receives Azerbaijani gas through the terminal, also opposed sanctioning Kulevi.
However, the use of a “shadow fleet” isn’t the only reason for suspicion regarding Kulevi. “It’s now becoming clearer why the European Union included the port of Kulevi on its sanctions list. The country is being embroiled in a major scandal,” wrote economist and former president of the National Bank of Georgia Roman Gotsiridze on Facebook. Despite the record-breaking figures, there are doubts in Georgia that the Kulevi refinery is actually operating.
Questions about this arose immediately after the first oil shipment from Russia, but Black Sea Petroleum representatives did not respond to journalists’ inquiries. Meanwhile, the Khobi municipality, where Kulevi is located, told the Batumelebi publication in November 2025 that “test work is underway at the refinery; the facility has not yet been officially opened.” The company’s website also only contains photographs of the construction phase. “If we were able to go inside the refinery now and see it with our own eyes, we would see that processing such a quantity of oil there is impossible,” Besik Donadze speculates.
Sandro Kevkhishvili of TI explains that Black Sea Petroleum “always stated that they would start small and then increase volumes”:
“If you’re a legitimate business, not involved in any suspicious schemes, you can make a statement: ‘This is what we do, this is how much we recycle, this is our plan…’ But they remain silent, and the government remains silent. This heightens suspicion.”
There are several possible explanations for the miraculous export statistics, writes Roman Gotsiridze: “Instead of the crude oil indicated in the documents, diesel fuel or gasoline produced in Russia was imported and then exported under the guise of Georgian products,” or “a semi-finished product for the production of diesel fuel was imported (even though it was registered at customs as crude oil), to which other substances were added in small quantities, i.e., the quality was ‘adjusted’ with additives.” Both scenarios constitute falsification of customs documents, a criminal offense, and a violation of sanctions, since the petroleum products were sold to an EU country (Malta).
Another possible explanation, according to Gotsiridze, is that “Russian crude oil entered the Kulevi terminal, while Azerbaijani finished petroleum products were exported,” registered as being produced in Georgia. However, in this case, SOCAR, which owns the Kulevi terminal, would also be drawn into the scandal.
Besik Donadze emphasizes that, in a situation where “state institutions have been captured < by the pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party — The Insider> , no one will be able to tell what kind of oil arrived at the terminal—crude or refined. What was written on paper is one thing, and reality is another.”
If sanctions are imposed, they will further damage Georgia’s reputation, Kevkhishvili believes, including “this could become an additional problem in relations with the United States, which is not as tough on Russia but uses oil sanctions as a tool of pressure.”
According to Geostat data, which ranks petroleum products as the second-largest export volume, passenger cars have held the top spot for several years now. These are also not produced in Georgia. Kyrgyzstan remains the largest re-export market, accounting for only 2% of cars shipped from Georgia. The rest likely go to Russia.
In a conversation with The Insider, Donadze cites the re-export of cars as an example of sanctions circumvention. However, he doesn’t believe that the introduction of restrictive measures against Kulevi will have no effect: “Sanctions are a process. You can’t just close one door and be done with it. They’re constantly looking for holes on the other side, and we need to gradually close each loophole.” So Georgia is likely at the very beginning of its sanctions journey.
