Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 15
By Sara Israfilbayova – Trend:
Azerbaijan has suspended oil pumping through Baku-Novorossiysk, Ibrahim Ahmadov, Deputy Head of the Public Relations Department at Azerbaijan’s SOCAR state company, told Trend.
According to Ahmadov, this is due to scheduled inspections and repair work on the pipeline.
"We carry out regular inspections on the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline and, in case of identifying any flaws or risks, carry out the necessary repairs," he said.
As Ahmadov noted, in order to fulfill the company's export obligations, the oil that was supplied via Baku-Novorossiysk has been redirected to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
"Due to us having an extensive system of pipelines, we can redirect some volumes of oil to other pipelines in order to fulfill our export obligations," Ahmadov said.
The Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline transports oil extracted by SOCAR independently, as well as from onshore fields developed within joint ventures. SOCAR has been the operator of the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline since 2008.
The Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline is 1,147 kilometers long, 231 kilometers in its Azerbaijani section, and 916 kilometers in its Russian section. The highest capacity of the pipeline stands at 105,000 barrels a day.
The total length of the BTC pipeline is 1,768 kilometers, 443 kilometers of which passes through Azerbaijan, 249 through Georgia and 1,076 through Turkey. Construction of the pipeline was commenced in April 2003 and was filled with oil on May 18, 2005.