The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries crude oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia, may resume full operations within days after a fire halted exports, a BP Plc spokeswoman said.
“We are carrying out integrity testing on the pipeline,” Tamam Bayatly said by telephone from Baku on Saturday.
“As part of that, we are ramping up the flow into the line. That will go on until we can reach full production next week.” She didn’t specify a date. A fire broke out on a Turkish section of the BP Plc-led 1,768- kilometer (1,100-mile) link on August 5, forcing the pipeline’s partners to halt the flow of Azeri crude to world markets from the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Crude from the pipeline is being pumped to replenish the seven depots at the port, which can hold 1 million barrels of oil each and were emptied during the pipeline’s closure to load tankers, said Huseyin Sagir, a spokesman for Botas International Ltd, a Turkish operating company.
Botas may not wait for all seven depots to be full before shipments recommence, Sagir said, adding that they may resume on tomorrow or Wednesday.
“The pipeline is now flowing at 70 percent capacity, meaning about 700,000 barrels a day,” Turkish Energy Ministry spokesman Akif Sam said in a telephone interview. Loading may start early next week as contracts with tankers are being prepared and signed. Separately, the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which pumps more than 100,000 barrels a day of crude to Georgia’s Black Sea region and was closed during the military conflict there with Russia, remains shut “as a precaution,” Bayatly said, adding that there is no start-up date yet.
(KATHIMERINI, 08/25/2008)