Baku News

17 June 2008 - Day.Az –  The group of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan export pipeline, operated by BP, has load the 500th tanker with Azerbaijani oil. This oil has been delivered from the Sangachal terminal near Baku, via the territories of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to Ceyhan port. Day.Az reports with reference to BP-Azerbaijan that the 500th St.Elena tanker arrived at Ceyhan on June 14. The tanker was load with 630,000 barrels of crude, belonging to SOCAR. Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil is intended for Triest (Italy). Since the beginning of expert operations in 2006, BTC has been operated with good safety indicators. The capacity of the pipeline was constantly raising and the top daily capacity made 949,393 barrels on May 11 of 2008. Moreover, in May of 2008 another record was set on BTC-within a month 37 tankers were load in Ceyhan and the total volume of export made 29 mln barrels of crude. Overall volume of oil and condensate, so far exported by BTC, nears 397 mln barrels (over 53 mln tons). Currently, the volume of production, exported by BTC, has neared 850,000 barrels per day and the pipeline is expected to transport 1 mln barrels per day (nearly 50 mln tons per year) later this year. Currently, work is carried out at raising the pipeline capacity by 20%, which allows to bring it to 1,200 barrels per day. The increase in the pipeline's capacity to complete by December of this year will expand the capacities of export of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli and Shah Deniz hydrocarbons in the near future and ensure additional capacities in the long term perspective. BTC Co. shareholders are: BP(30,1%, operator); АzBTC (25,00%); Chevron (8,90%); StatoilHydro (8,71%); TPAO (6,53%); Eni (5,00%); Total (5,00%), Itochu (3,40%); INPEX (2,50%), ConocoPhillips (2,50%), and Hess (2,36%).