The total volume of oil exports last year was practically 80 million dollars, while this year, in January alone, we have 56 million dollars worth of oil exported from the country. This fact, which is unequivocally a manipulation, further increases the risks that the Kulevi port and the entire country will fall under the EU’s twentieth sanctions package and attract very bad attention from the Trump administration, - this was stated by one of the leaders of “Lelo - Strong Georgia,” Tazo Datunashvili.

According to his explanation, there are only two scenarios under which such a volume of oil could have been exported from Georgia, and according to one of them, Russian crude oil is coming into Georgia, being processed at the Kulevi plant, and thus exported.

According to “Geostat,” compared to January of the previous year, in January 2026, local exports of petroleum products from Georgia increased by 3224%. Georgia exported 56 million US dollars worth of refined petroleum products from the country, even though the petroleum products processing plant in Kulevi has not even started operating yet - construction work is still ongoing. We are seeing a simulation of oil processing, because this volume of oil simply is not extracted in Georgia. This refined oil has already been exported from Georgia in January 2026, mainly in three directions: to Turkey, Malta, and Singapore. Just looking at the numbers, the total volume of exports last year was practically 80 million dollars, while this year in January alone we have 56 million dollars worth of oil exported from the country. This fact, which is unequivocally a manipulation, further increases the risks that the Kulevi port and the entire country will fall under the EU’s sanctions twentieth package and attract very bad attention from the Trump administration - you know the situation with Russia’s shadow fleet and trade in Russian oil. Why do I mention Russian oil? Because there are only two scenarios under which this volume of oil could have been exported to another country from Georgia. The first scenario is imported crude oil, which is actually diesel or gasoline, and in Georgia its name is changed, registered as local, and exported from here as oil exported from Georgia. Here, the aggravating circumstance on one hand is document forgery, and on the other hand, the aggravating circumstance is that this oil, which with high probability is of Russian origin, has already been exported to an EU country. As you know, Malta is an EU country. The second version is that Russian crude oil is coming in and by some miraculous machines at the Kulevi terminal, in the processing plant, this oil is processed and thus exported from Georgia. However, scientifically it is impossible for an unfinished plant to process this volume of oil in this time.

This operation directly puts Georgia at risk of falling under such sanctions that will directly hit Georgia’s financial stability. To that country where today the entire parliament is mobilized over the price of eggs - the entire financial institutions and financial stability of this country may collapse because of the sanctions provided for such manipulations. We demand the disclosure of all details about the exporters of petroleum products, as well as about the origin of the processed oil!,” - stated Tazo Datunashvili.