Baku News

10 October 2008 - Upstream OnLine - The Chevron-led Tengizchevroil consortium plans to start oil shipments via the BP-run Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in the second half of this month, BP Azerbaijan said today. "We expect to start pumping some volumes of Tengizchevroil's crude via the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline in the second half of October," company spokesman Tamam Bayatly told Reuters. She did not say how much oil was expected to be delivered. Tengizchevroil, struggling to expand its key pipeline export route, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), had hoped to start alternative exports via Baku in the middle of last year. A source at Azeri state oil company Socar told Reuters last month Tengizchevroil could start delivering 20,000 to 60,000 barrels per day via Azerbaijan. The crude was supposed to be shipped by both BTC and railways. The BTC pipeline, which runs from large Azeri fields on the Caspian Sea to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, can pump more than 1 million barrels per day, but currently works under its design capacity.