BP Azerbaijan, the operator of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, has denied statements of the British petroleum company BP in London that it has stopped pumping oil through the pipeline due to "anomalies."
"We continue to inspect the pipeline that stopped to pump oil to the Black Sea coast on 21 October due to regular maintenance," a BP Azerbaijan spokesperson told ITAR-TASS onThursday.
Initially, it was planned to shut down the pipeline for 10 days, but it turned out that an additional inspection of a 150-kilometer section of the pipeline in Georgia is necessary, the spokesperson said.
"Such inspection has already been conducted. At present, experts are analyzing the data a pipeline inspection gauge collected while travelling down the pipe," the official said.
This tool not only cleans the pipeline, but also collects information about the pipeline's condition, including of its inner surface.
"The Baku-Supsa pipeline will be launched soon after we get a 100-percent guarantee that it will safely operate. It is incorrect to compare the situation on the Baku-Supsa pipeline with BP's technical problems in Alaska that caused an oil spill," the spokesperson said.
According to BP Azerbaijan, the Baku-Supsa pipeline has been shut down for regular maintenance for the third time since 1999. Earlier, it was shut down in 2001 and 2004.
BP Azerbaijan's spokesperson says that "the current shutdown of the pipeline did not affect the output and export of oil from offshore fields in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian".
"Other export routes - the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, the Baku- Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and railway transportation from Baku to Batumi - are being used," the spokesperson said.
(ITAR-TASS, news agency Moscow, 09/11/2006)