Azerbaijan, Baku, April 8 / Trend /
In January-March 2009, about 8.2 million tons of oil was transported via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), compared to 8.7 million tons the same period of 2008, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) said.
In March, a total of 3.1 million tons of oil was transported via the pipeline, compared to 2.9 million tons of March 2008. A total of 78.6 million tons of oil was transported via the pipeline.
A total of 8.4 million tons of oil was shipped from the Turkish Ceyhan port in the first quarter of 2009, compared to 8.9 million tons in 2008.
The BTC transports light oil produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli AND Shah Deniz fields. The maximum project capacity of the pipeline is 1 million barrels of oil. However, pipeline's capacity was recently increased to 1.2 million barrels per day.
The total length of BТС is 1.768 kilometre, including the 443 kilometre section running via Azerbaijan, the 249km section via Georgia and the 1.076 kilometre via Turkey. Construction of the pipeline was commenced in April 2003 and it was filled with oil on May 18, 2005.
BTC company shareholders include: BP (30.1 percent); AzBTC (25 percent); Chevron (8.90 percent); Statoil Hydro (8.71 percent); ТРАО (6.53 percent); Eni (5 percent); Total (5 percent); Itochu (3.40 percent); Inpex (2.50 percent); ConocoPhillips (2.50 percent) and Hess (2.36 percent).