Azerbaijan, Baku, June 2 / Trend E.Ismayilov /
Over 400,000 tons of Kazakh oil are transported via Azerbaijan per month, Azerbaijan State Caspian Shipping Company (CASPAR) head Aydin Bashirov said today.
He noted that of the total amount of oil transported through Azerbaijan via the Caspian Sea about 220,000 tons fall to CASPAR and the remaining 200,000 tons to transportation carried out by the Kazakh side. The total volume also includes oil from the Kazakh Tengiz Field.
CASPAR plans to transport 12.5 million tons of cargo in 2009, Bashirov added.
Bashirov said a decrease has been observed in freight traffic, which explains the decrease in freight traffic from Kazakhstan to Iran, as well as the decrease in goods from Turkmenistan.
CASPAR transported 13.2 million tons of cargo in 2009, of which 9.86 million tons fell to oil cargo. The freight traffic volume is forecast at 13.5 million tons, of which about 70-75 percent will fall to crude oil cargo in 2010.
Kazakh oil supplied to Azerbaijan is transported by rail to the Black Sea coast of Georgia. In 2008, Tengizchevroil (U.S.-Kazakh joint venture with Chevron) began transporting oil from Tengiz to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline. However, since early this year, transportation of Kazakh oil was suspended via the BTC due to inconsistencies between the company and the BTC shareholders on tariffs.
In 2009, BTC transported 1.9 million tons of oil from Tengiz. In 2008 (October-December), BTC transported 285,100 tons of Kazakh oil.
BТС's total length is 1.768 kilometers, including a 443-kilometer section running via Azerbaijan, a 249-kilometer section traversing Georgia and a 1,076-kilometer section passing through Turkey.
BTC's shareholders are BP (30.1 percent), AzBTC (25 percent), Chevron (8.90 percent), Statoil (8.71 percent), TRAO (6.53 percent), ENI (5 percent), Total (5 percent), Itochu (3.40 percent), Inpex (2.50 percent), ConocoPhilips (2.50 percent) and Hess (2.36 percent).
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