KIEV, Aug. 2 – Ukraine plans to sign contracts by the end of the year to ship up to 2 million metric tons of crude oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to Europe, the state oil shipper UkrTransNafta reported Tuesday.

In a letter to the government, UkrTransNafta asked to ease some of earlier restrictions to enable shipments of Azeri and Kazakh crude via the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline, which is currently mostly filled with Russia’s Urals.