Azernews.Az

ASTANA – Kazakhstan views the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline pumping Azerbaijan’s oil through Georgia and Turkey as one of the routes for supplying its oil to world markets, Chief Executive of Kazakh state energy company KazMunaiGas has said.

Kairgeldy Kabyldin told a news conference in Astana that an average of 100,000 tons per day of Kazakh oil were transported through the pipeline in 2009. However, in early 2010 the Central Asian state suspended pumping of its crude via the conduit after BTC shareholders raised transit fees for the country.

Kabyldin said talks are underway between the shareholders and the US-Kazakh joint venture Tengizchevroil, which is developing Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil field. He added that the timing for resuming the transportation of Kazakh oil via BTC depends on an agreement to be reached by the parties.

Earlier, a senior official of Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR said that the tariff for transporting Kazakh oil offered to Tengizchevroil by the BTC stakeholders is 15 to 20 percent below the fees paid by other oil producers.

Tengiz oil is currently transported through Azerbaijan only by railway.

Tengizchevroil began transporting Tengiz oil via the BP-operated BTC pipeline in 2008. According to Azerbaijan’s statistics committee, the conduit transported 285,100 tons of Kazakh oil in October-December 2008 and 1.9 million tons in 2009. The Kazakh government was paying a transit fee of $4 per barrel.

BTC shareholders include BP (30.1%), SOCAR (25%), Chevron (8.9%), Statoil (8.71%), TPAO (6.53%), ENI (5%), Total (5%), Itochu (3.40%), Inpex (2.5%), ConocoPhillips (2.5%) and Hess (2.36%).

The BTC pipeline opened in 2006. The 1,768 km conduit transports oil produced from Azerbaijan’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block in the Caspian Sea. The pipeline allows up to one million barrels of oil a day to be exported from the Caspian without increasing tanker traffic through the crowded Turkish Straits.