Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 7 / Trend E.Ismayilov /
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), which is a shareholder in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, is interested in attracting additional volumes of oil, in particular, that of Turkmen, Kazakh and Russian origin, a senior representative of SOCAR said on Thursday. He commented on the possible transportation of Caspian oil from the Russian oil company Lukoil via the BTC.
According to him, the capacity of the BTC is 1.2 million barrels per day, but in fact the volumes transported by pipeline oil below the potential.
"The transportation of the additional Turkmen, Kazakh and Russian oil via this pipeline is attractive from a commercial point of view. We, as shareholders, have an interest in the pipeline's operation at full capacity and increasing our profits," he said.
Lukoil is considering at least four routes of oil transported from the Caspian fields under development, Dmitry Dolgov, the company spokesman, told Trend earlier.
"We have at least four options for oil transportation from Caspian fields. These are the CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium), the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, the delivery to our Volgograd refinery and Baku-Novorossiysk," Dolgov said.
At present, the oil from the block of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea is transported via the BTC pipeline. Small oil volumes from Turkmenistan were transported via this pipeline a few months ago.
The total length of BТС is 1.768 kilometers including a 443 kilometer section stretching via Azerbaijan, a 249 kilometer section via Georgia and a 1.076 kilometer via Turkey.
BTC Co. 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 Amerada Hess (2.36 percent).
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