Offshore staff
Today's inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline marks a major step in BP's continuing long-term strategy of delivering growing volumes of oil and gas from new hydrocarbon provinces around the world, the company says.
The 1,770-km pipeline will carry 10 MMb/d from the BP-operated Azeri Chirag Gunashli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the eastern Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, bypassing the sensitive and heavily used Bosphorous Straits.
President Ilham Aliyev of the Azerbaijan Republic, President Mikhail Saakashvilli of Georgia and President Ahmet Sezer of Turkey, joined by President Nursaltan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan officially opened the pipeline at the Sangachal terminal, near Baku.
"The pipeline opens up massive new fields in the Caspian Sea to world markets, enhancing security of supply for decades to come. And it does so in a way that avoids the transit of large numbers of tankers through the narrow and congested Bosphorous," Lord Browne, BP CEO, says.
Filling the line will be a staged process, with the first oil due to take more than six months to reach Ceyhan. Once this process is complete, crude can travel from Sangachal to the Mediterranean in a week and a half. Plans call for the first oil cargo to be lifted from Ceyhan towards the end of 2005.
BP holds a leading 30% stake in the consortium running the pipeline. Other consortium members include SOCAR, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Inpex, Itochu, Statoil, Total, TPAO, and Unocal.
05/25/05
