The FINANCIAL — According to abc.az. The success of Botas International Ltd, BTC technical operator on the Turkish segment, connected with fire extinguishing has not impacted the terms of resuming the oil export stopped on August 6.
Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) reported that BOTAS International Ltd informed AIOC that the fire has been extinguished and the repairs started.
“Botas has not informed about completion of the repairs and at present we’re waiting for them to complete it to resume exporting oil via BTC,” AIOC informed.
The fire 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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