Baku News

28 September 2006 - Today.Az – Royal Dutch Shell wants to take part in the development of the Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline. As part of this objective, Shell signed a contract with Calik Energy and Italian Energy giant ENI, partners in the project. Shell is expected to contribute to the construction of the project and take part in the management of the pipeline. No information about the timeframe of this contribution and partnership has been announced. Canan Ediboglu, chief executive of Shell-Turkey, said oil produced in Kazakhstan would be sent to the pipeline after it was finished. The capacity of the pipeline is expected to be one million barrels per day in the beginning, and this will increase to 1.5 million barrels at the completion of the project. Calik Energy has been known to be conducting negotiations to meet one of the most important preconditions of a pipeline, which is throughput. The problem was mostly solved however after Shell became a partner in the project. Ediboglu said the daily oil production of Kazakhstan is more than 1.3 million barrels, adding. "Their export volume exceeds one million barrels per day and most of this oil is exported via the Black Sea, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles Straits." Shell and ENI are also partners in the Caspian Oil Pipeline Consortium, which was established to carry oil produced in the Kashagan region of Kazakhstan. The same authority said the decree, which allotted six months to Calik Energy to realize the project, was accepted in May 2006, and added taking concrete steps in this framework before the deadline ended was a positive development. Ediboglu said: "The project is very important toward making Ceyhan an energy terminal for international markets. The annual amount of oil entering Ceyhan will exceed 200 million barrels with the help of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, in addition to the oil coming from Iraq."