Azernews.Az

By Leman Mammadova

Turkey imported 78,000 tons of crude oil from Azerbaijan in January 2019.

According to Turkey’s Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) report, the volume of crude oil imported by Turkey from Azerbaijan increased by 5 times in January compared to December of last year, AZERTAC reports.

In the first month of the year, the share of Azerbaijani oil was 2.53 percent in Turkey's total oil imports.

Turkey imported 15,700 tons of crude oil from Azerbaijan in December last year.

Turkey imports crude oil from Azerbaijan mainly through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan export oil pipeline (BTC).

At present, the BTC pipeline mainly transports the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil and Shah Deniz condensate from Azerbaijan. In addition, other crude oil and condensate volumes, including Turkmen, Russian and Kazakh oil are transported via the pipeline.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline has been established to ensure access to crude oil produced at ACG field in the Caspian Sea under the "Contract of the Century".

The length of the pipeline is 1,768 km, 443 km runs through Azerbaijan, 249 km - through Georgia and 1,076 km - through Turkey. Daily transport capacity of the pipeline is 1.2 million barrels.

The crude oil delivery to the first tanker at the Ceyhan terminal took place in the summer of 2006.

From that time until the end of 2018, BTC transported more than 417 million tons (about 3.12 billion barrels) of crude oil and was loaded into the world market by loading 4085 tankers at the port of Ceyhan.

The first delivery of approximately 600,000 barrels of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) crude oil, transported through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, was loaded on the British Hawthorn tanker on June 4, 2006 and dispatched from the new Ceyhan Offshore Terminal. Being a strategic project, it is the first direct link between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean.

In 2018, approximately 34 million tons (255 million barrels) of crude oil was exported through BTC.

BTC Co. shareholders are BP (30.1 percent); SOCAR (25 percent); Chevron (8.9 percent); Equinor (8.71 percent); TPAO (6.53 percent); ENI (5 percent); Total (5 percent), ITOCHU (3.4 percent); INPEX (2.5 percent), Exon Mobile (2.5 percent), ONGC (2.36 percent).

This pipeline, which is considered to be the main artery of energy export in the region, has played an important role in the extraction of the Caspian Sea's rich energy resources and bringing them to the world markets.

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

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