BAKU

The BP-led international consortium said it had exported 500 million tonnes of oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, marking an important milestone since the pipeline became operational in 2006.

“The milestone was achieved on December 12 when the 500 millionth tonne of Caspian crude flowed through the pipeline, was loaded on the 4922nd tanker named Nordorse and departed for Trieste (Italy) ,” the consortium said.

The current throughput capacity of the 1,768-km pipeline is 1.2 million barrels of oil per day. The BTC shareholders are BP, AzBTC, MOL, Equinor, TPAO, Eni, Total, ITOCHU, INPEX, ExxonMobil and ONGC (BTC) Limited.

“After so many years, the pipeline continues to be the major artery of energy export in the region serving as a strategic direct link between the landlocked Caspian and the Mediterranean which has easy access to the markets all over the world,” Gary Jones, BP’s regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, said in a statement.

Azerbaijan mainly produces oil on its major Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oilfields, the largest oil field block in Azerbaijan developed by a BP-led international consortium. The first production sharing agreement for developing the block was signed on September 20, 1994, while a new deal on the joint exploitation of these fields and production sharing was reached on September 14, 2017. The agreement provides for the development of the areas by the end of 2049. The field started production from the Chirag platform in November 1997. Since 1994, around $40 billion of investment has been made into the development of the ACG field. ACG has also delivered about 50 billion cubic metres of associated gas in total.

Apart from BP, the project’s operator, members of the consortium are Azerbaijan’s state energy firm SOCAR, MOL, INPEX, Equinor, ExxonMobil, TPAO, ITOCHU and ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL).

In September, BP said it had produced four billion barrels of oil on the ACG, marking another important milestone since the project’s beginning in 1994.

ACG currently has eight offshore platforms – six production platforms and two process, gas compression, water injection and utility platforms. The next development project of ACG – the Azeri Central East (ACE) – is currently under construction and is progressing on a plan with the first oil expected in 2023.