TBILISI - Georgia has begun construction of another Black Sea port at Supsa to handle increasing volumes of cargos such as crude oil from the Caspian Sea region.

The cost of building the port has grown to $700 million from an initial estimate of $500 million as the project has expanded, Shalva Tsakadze, head of developer Black Sea Product, said by telephone late last week. He declined to identify the financial backers of the project.

The Supsa port won’t compete with existing ports at Poti and Batumi because it’s designed to accommodate different sorts of tankers, Tsakadze said. The port will have an annual capacity of as much as 40 million metric tons of oil and other cargo once the 204-hectare facility is completed, he said.

The Georgian government earns transit fees from two BP Plc- led pipelines that carry Azeri crude to world markets. One is the Baku-Supsa link to the Black Sea and the other is the Baku- Tbilisi-Ceyhan route to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, both of which Georgia accused Russia of trying to bomb during the war.

Up the coast from Supsa is Poti, the port owned by the Gulf emirate of Ras al-Khaimah.

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