Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend S.Aliyev / BP Azerbaijan Company, the operator of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, will complete its design capacity project to expand its pipeline-carrying capacity 1mln barrels of oil up to 1.2mln barrels per day in 2008, stated Rashid Javanshir, BTC's Chief Executive Officer and BP's Vice-President, Onshore Operations on 15 August. According to him, the cost of the expansion will amount to nearly $100mln.
Currently the Company is holding research on the possibility of expanding the carrying capacity at the expense of chemical components. Since April 2007, the oil has been exported to world markets mainly via BTC. The total volume of the oil and condensate, exported via BTC until the end of July, made up 180.1 mln barrels (more than 24mln tons). The average daily carrying capacity of the pipeline in July equaled nearly 700,000 barrels of oil. BP intends to increase the volume of transportations via this pipeline up to 1mln barrels of oil per day (nearly 50mln tons per day).
In future, BP intends to increase the carrying capacity of the pipeline up to 1.6mln barrels of oil per day.