Industry and Energy

Industry and Energy

Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline loads 1000th tanker at Ceyhan

18 December 2009 13:37 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev â€“ APA-Economics. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil export pipeline, operated by BP, has today started loading the 1000th cargo of oil transported from the Sangachal terminal near Baku across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to Ceyhan, BP Azerbaijan said in a press release.

The 1000th tanker â€“ the British Kestrel, arrived at the Ceyhan Marine Terminal on December 17 and will depart for Rotterdam as soon as the loading is completed.

The 1000th tanker, which is being loaded simultaneously with the 999th cargo, will take on board approximately 600,000 barrels of crude oil. The oil transported via BTC to world markets mainly comes from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shah Deniz fields in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. The next - 1001st tanker, â€œBakuâ€, is expected to sail during this weekend, carrying crude oil belonging to SOCAR (Azerbaijanâ€™s State Oil Company).

The total volume of oil exported via BTC to date is about 791 million barrels (about 106 million tonnes). The current export rate via BTC is about 850,000 barrels per day with the highest daily flow-rate to date being 1,006,505 million barrels.

The 1768km BTC pipeline allows over one million barrels of oil a day to be exported safely and responsibly from the Caspian without increasing tanker traffic through the already crowded Turkish Straits.

The pipeline uses 46/42/34â€ diameter pipe. It has eight pump stations and 98 valve stations across the three transit countries. The pipeline crosses more than 1500 rivers and climbs to a high point of 2,800 metres before returning to sea level at Ceyhan.

Since the start of the pipeline project BTC Co. has spent $10 million in Azerbaijan alone on sustainable development projects. For the three countries the respective number is around $64 million. Overall the company has worked with 550 communities (approximately 730,000 people) along its length and has implemented over 1000 sustainable development initiatives and these will continue in the future.

The BTC Co. shareholders are: BP (30.1 per cent, operator); AzBTC (25 per cent); Chevron (8.9 per cent); Statoil (8.71 per cent); TPAO (6.53 per cent); ENI (5 per cent); Total (5 per cent), Itochu (3.4 per cent); INPEX (2.5 per cent), ConocoPhillips (2.5 per cent) and Hess (2.36 per cent).