State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) has announced the start of the transit of Kazakh oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The first shipment of Kazakh oil from the Tengiz field arrived at the Sangachal Terminal in Azerbaijan from the port of Aktau via the “President Heydar Aliyev” tanker on March 23.
The transportation of Kazakh oil through BTC is being carried out under a Master Agreement between SOCAR and KazMunayGas, which aims to transit 1.5 million tons of oil annually.
There are plans to conduct 12-14 tanker voyages per month across the Caspian Sea until the end of 2023. The second loading of Kazakh oil from the port of Aktau will be done via the “Shusha” tanker on March 27.
In 2022, SOCAR executed significant projects to upgrade the gathering pipeline network at the Sangachal Terminal to receive Kazakh oil into the BTC pipeline, increasing its capacity utilization.
BTC carries oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli and condensate from Shah Deniz fields, as well as from other sources. BTC’s current throughput capacity is 1.2 million barrels per day or 50 million tons per year. Since the 1,768 km BTC pipeline became operational in June 2006 till the end of 2022, it carried a total of 3.99 billion barrels (more than 531 million tonnes) of crude oil loaded on 5,244 tankers and sent to world markets. On 18 January 2023, BTC achieved the 4 billion barrels of oil export milestone.
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