The FINANCIAL — According to abc.az., the past weekend became extremely important for Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) as it was transferred to a normal work mode after Botas International Ltd, BTC technical operator on the Turkish segment, connected with fire extinguishing has completed the repair works after a fire in Turkey on August 6.
Azerbaijan International Oil Company (AIOC) informed Fineko/abc.az that on the weekend oil volumes delivering via the pipeline were growing insensibly.
“Today delivery increase is ongoing, but we could say that BTC is operating in normal mode. In parallel AIOC started increasing oil production on Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) in Azeri sector of Caspian Sea up to normal volumes,” it was informed.
Normal volumes to be exported by the pipeline is 800-900,000 barrels a day. From August 20 BTC exported limited oil volumes to test the damaged segments.
From August 6 up today the world market has not received up to 14.48 million barrels of oil from the Company. At the same time there is no decision made on resumption of oil delivery via Baku-Supsa pipeline stopped on August 12 because of military actions in Georgia.
The fire on BTC was extinguished on August 11 and Ministry of Energy of Turkey announced the end of the repairs this week.
After the fire occurred AIOC switched to use of alternate oil export routes – Baku-Supsa and Baku-Novorossiysk pipelines (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan is its operator currently), and Baku-Batumi railway route. The alternate routes are hardly able to compensate BTC capacity and AIC was forced to diminish oil production from contract area Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli to settle oil storage capacity at Sangachal Terminal. Production decrease is linked with the fact how much the alternate routes are able to compensate lack of export via BTC.
BTC pipe length is 1,767 km, including 1,076 km in Turkey. The pipeline is designed for oil export from ACG block in Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. In 2008 it was planned to carry 50 million tons of oil for the first time that conforms to pipe potential capacity. In July oil export via BTC reached 25,332,507 barrels (3,403,220 tons).
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