BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 15. Kazakhstan will launch oil shipment via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) starting in March, Bulat Zakirov, Deputy Chairman of the Board for Transportation of KazMunayGas, said, Trend reports, citing Kazakh media.
The national oil and gas company official noted that the first
batch of oil will be sent before the end of March.
“At the end of 2022, we signed an agreement with SOCAR, the
national oil company of Azerbaijan, on the annual transportation of
1.5 million tons of oil. We plan to transport oil extracted at
Tengiz oilfield. We will start transporting oil before the end of
March,” Zakirov said.
The move to launch oil transit via the BTC pipeline comes as a part of Kazakh strategy to diversify oil export routes. The necessity for this transition became evident during the problems experienced with oil exports through the territory of Russia.
Last year, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Energy Bolat Akchulakov said that Kazakhstan is studying the possibility of increasing oil supplies running through the territory of Azerbaijan to 6-6.5 million tons per year.