A small volume of crude oil from the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan will be added to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the second half of October, arriving in the Turkish port of Ceyhan in mid-November, a spokesman for pipeline operator BP PLC (BP) said Wednesday.
The move comes as 60% of the 850,000 barrel a day crude flow through the BTC has been cut following the shutdown of two platforms on the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field in the Caspian Sea last month after a gas leak.
However, the spokesman said the introduction of Tengiz into the BTC has been discussed for years and isn't a response to the problems at the ACG fields.
"There was always spare capacity available in the BTC," he said, and surplus Tengiz crude will continue to flow through the pipeline in the long term.