Israel, Jerusalem, 18 January / Trend corr. R.Abdullayev / " Israel may become the real bridge for transporting raw oil to the Far East. The Eylat-Ashkelon pipeline company put forward an international initiative to create the route for transporting raw oil from the Turkish Ceyhan port to East Asia by using its infrastructure in Israel," the Marker newspaper reported. The Azerbaijani oil will also be transported via the pipeline, which is being delivered to Ceyhan via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
The author of the article Avi Bar Eli will implement the initiative by the consortium of energy firms and international companies on cargo transporting. The Azerbaijani oil will be loaded by tankers to Ashkelon, and transported to Eylat via the pipeline. The oil will be loaded to other boats in order to transport it to East Asia.
Eylat-Ashkelon company was established by Israel and Iran. Presently, Teheran does not take part in the company's projects. Eli, wrote that Eylat-Ashkelon completed the trial launching of the pipeline. The Turkish tanker with raw oil arrived to Ashkelon and the company transported the oil to Eylat. The tanker loaded the Azerbaijani oil and transported it to the Asian port. The load process in Turkey and transports it to Israel and then to Eylat was completed for five days.
Within the framework of implementation of the project it is expected to construct the reservoir to keep oil in Ceyhan port, as well as the infrastructure of the port to load tankers. The cost of the project is $200-$300mln. Eylat-Ashkelon is to complete negotiations to finance the project with the Turkish and Indian companies.
The Council of Directors of Eylat-Ashkelon approved the expansion of the reservoir on the sea cost of Ashkelon by 20%. The company will allocate the necessary $60-$80mln for this purpose.
The carrying capacity of Eylat-Ashkelon is 20mln tons of oil per year, with a possible increase of the capacity to 40mln tons per year.
The initiative to transport the oil via Israel was due to the completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline construction, through which the Azerbaijani light oil is transported. Carrying capacity of the pipeline is 50mln tons of oil per year.