BTC Co (operated by the British company BP) has received applications for the transportation of additional volumes of Kazakh oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, BP vice president for communications and external relations in the Caspian and Middle East region, told journalists that discussions are underway.
“There are technical issues that need to be determined regarding the possibility of receiving Kazakh oil at the Sangachal terminal, i.e. the technical concept should be agreed upon,” he said at the briefing.
According to him, there is also the issue of mixing oil with Azeri Light. “There is a maximum volume allowed for receiving and mixing, exceeding which may have a negative impact on the quality of Azerbaijani oil,” he said.
Aslanbayli added that at present the maximum capacity of the BTC oil pipeline is 1.2 million bpd.
At the same time, the actual volume of pumping is 660 thousand bps. “Of this volume, 440,000 bpd falls on oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block, 100,000 bpd – on condensate from the “Shah Deniz” field, 100,000 bpd – on transit oil,” he stressed.
The length of the BTC oil pipeline is 1,768 km, of which 443 km in Azerbaijan, 249 km in Georgia, and 1,076 km in Turkey.
Caspian Barrel
