Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 7 / Trend E. Ismayilov /
If large volumes of oil are transported from Kazakh Kashagan field via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), shareholders of this pipeline will be interested in increasing the capacity of the pipeline, SOCAR senior representative said.
He said that at present, the capacity of the pipeline is 1.2 million barrels per day. If it is necessary to transport additional volumes of Azerbaijani oil and oil within other projects of the Caspian littoral countries in the future, a decision can be made to increase the pipeline capacity by 1.6 million barrels per day.
A SOCAR representative said that Kazakhstan operates within the Kashagan field development project. According to the forecasts, it is planned to get oil volumes from this field by 2018-2019. The variant of transportation through the Caspian Sea via BTC is considered to export this oil.
"In this case, we will be very interested in the pipeline with capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day or with another power. We consider all technical variants", SOCAR representative 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 BTC. Turkmen oil was transported via the pipeline a few months ago. The oil from Kazakh Tengiz field was transported via this pipeline in 2008-2009. Chevron participates in a development project.
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).