During January and February 2014 almost 489,500 tons of Kazakhstan oil was pumped via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, but in February 2014 the deliveries increased by 5.3% against January 2014. In February 2014 251,087 tons was transported via the pipeline against 238,399 tons in January, a source from SOCAR told Turan.
The consignor of goods via BTC on the Kazakh side is Chevron company, which transports its oil extracted on the Tengiz field to the world markets via Azerbaijan.
Chevron is the shareholder of BTC Co pipeline company. In 2008-2009 it used the route to export part of the Tengiz oil to the world markets. However, later on the company refused to use this route. Usage of BTC was expensive for Chevron, because cleaning of oil from sulfur in Aktau (the sulfur level should be at least 1% to be pumped into BTC) before loading into tankers made the route less attractive. Now the US company has solved this issue.
Export of Tengiz oil via BTC pipeline was resumed in November 2013. In November and December 2013 about 550,000 tons of Kazakhstan oil was exported via this route.
In 2014 it is planned to export 4.5 million tons of Kazakh oil via BTC, said Kazakhstan Ambassador to Azerbaijan Amangeldy Zhumbayev.
