Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 25
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR has already completed pumping of the volumes of its own oil envisaged for 2016 via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a source in the company told Trend Oct. 25.
The mentioned volumes are of nearly 140,000 tons of oil transported in January and February 2016, according to the source.
“Since we had no agreement with the Transneft JSC in early 2016 on pumping SOCAR’s oil via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, the company was pumping its oil via the BTC,” the source said.
“Nearly 140,000 tons of oil were pumped for two months,” the source noted. “Since March 2016, SOCAR resumed oil export through the Russian port and will continue it till late 2016 if nothing changes. We have no plans to redirect oil to the BTC in 2016 yet.”
SOCAR transships its oil via the Novorossiysk port. The oil is delivered to the port via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline.
The BTC pipeline transships oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of Azerbaijani oil and gas fields, as well as oil of producers from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
The total length of the BТС is 1,768 kilometers, including a 443-kilometer section running through Azerbaijan, a 249-kilometer section in Georgia and a 1,076-kilometer section in Turkey.
Construction of the pipeline started in 2003. It was filled with oil in 2005.
BTC Co. shareholders are: BP (30.1 percent), AzBTC (25 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent), Statoil (8.71 percent), ТРАО (6.53 percent), Eni (5 percent), Total (5 percent), Itochu (3.4 percent), Inpex (2.5 percent), ConocoPhillips (2.5 percent) and ONGC (2.36 percent).
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