Azernews.Az

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil export pipeline, operated by BP, on Friday started loading the 1000th cargo of oil transported from the Sangachal terminal near Baku across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to Ceyhan. The 1000th tanker – the British Kestrel, arrived at the Ceyhan Marine Terminal on Thursday and will depart for Rotterdam as soon as the loading is completed, according to BP Azerbaijan.
The 1000th tanker, which is being loaded simultaneously with the 999th cargo, will take on board about 600,000 barrels of crude. The oil transported via BTC to world markets mainly comes from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shahdaniz fields in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. The next - 1001st tanker, "Baku", is expected to sail during this weekend, carrying crude oil belonging to Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR.
The total volume of oil exported via BTC to date is about 791 million barrels (about 106 million tons). The current export rate via BTC is about 850,000 barrels per day with the highest daily flow-rate to date being 1,006,505 barrels.
Elkhan Mammadov, Azerbaijan Exports Operations Manager, says that BTC, which is designed as a world-class facility, has so far demonstrated exceptional efficiency. "The lifting of the 1000th tanker from Ceyhan is a remarkable milestone that winds up three and a half years of steady and efficient operations of BTC."
According to Mammadov, since the start up of export operations in 2006, the pipeline has demonstrated excellent safety performance with over 20 million man hours worked without a single day away from work case.
The 1768km BTC pipeline allows over one million barrels of oil a day to be exported from the Caspian without increasing tanker traffic through the already crowded Turkish Straits.
The pipeline has eight pump stations and 98 valve stations across the three transit countries. The pipeline crosses more than 1500 rivers and climbs to a high point of 2,800 meters before returning to sea level at Ceyhan.*