Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko has invited Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to invest in Ukraine's oil refineries, the Unian agency reported.
Speaking at the International Energy Forum in Kiev he said that Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are welcome to invest in reconstruction of the existing oil refineries in Ukraine and to build new ones along the pipeline running from Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa to Brody, near its western border with Poland.
The pipeline is a key part of the "Sarmatia" consortium, set up by Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Lithuania to build a new pipeline by 2011, intended to pump oil from the energy-rich Azerbaijan and potentially Kazakhstan through to Poland and on to Western Europe, thus decreasing reliance on Russian oil.