It had earlier been reported that Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania had signed an agreement on creation of a joint venture to design and build the Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk oil pipeline. The oil pipeline is planned to provide an alternative to imports from Russia, allowing oil exports from the Caspian and Black Sea regions to the Baltic Sea region.
The original Odessa-Brody trunk pipeline was built in 2001 to ship Caspian oil, but it remained unused for several years. In 2003, the Ukrainian government asked Price Waterhouse Coopers to prepare a business plan covering the extension of the pipeline to the Polish town of Plock. According to the plan, the project to build a pipeline with a capacity of 10m tons/yr would cost $300 million, while another $150 million would be required to increase its capacity to 25m tons/yr.
In 2004, the Ukrainian government agreed for the pipeline to operate in the reverse direction in order to transport Russian oil. Transneft and TNK-BP signed a supplemental agreement on 26 December, 2006, extending by three years the existing agreement dated 16 November, 2004, between Transneft, Ukrtransnafta, and TNK on partnership and the co-ordination of oil transport throughout Russia and Ukraine. The Odessa-Brody pipeline reverse-pumped 16,946m tonnes of crude oil between September, 2004, and 30 September this year, generating $187.8 million in transit and port fees.