Azernews.Az

By Leman Mammadova

Over 16.536 million tons of oil was transported through the main pipelines of Azerbaijan during the first five months of this year.

According to the State Statistical Committee, the largest part of the oil was exported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline - 13.42 million tons or 81.1 percent of the total oil transportation. This is slightly less than the figure for the same period of last year –13.74 million tons.

Azerbaijan also transited oil from third parties through BTC, mainly Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. During the reporting period, the volume of transit oil transported via the BTC exceeded 1.98 million tons.

In January-May, about 11.97 billion cubic meters of gas were transported via main pipelines. This is 20.9 percent higher than last year. About 4.21 billion cubic meters were transported through the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), through which gas is pumped from Shah Deniz. This is 35.2 percent of the total transportation volume.

SCP, namely the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline operating since late 2006, transports Shah Deniz gas to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

The volume of cargo transported by the Azerbaijan section of the Europe-Caucasus-Asia transport corridor amounted to more than 16.86 million tons in the first four months of 2019, and the cargo turnover – to more than 3.6 billion ton-kilometers.

Meanwhile, 64.3 percent of cargo (about 10.84 million tons) was transported by road, 25.2 percent (4.26 million tons) - by railways; 10.5 percent (1.77 million tons) - by sea. The transit cargo accounted for 16.7 percent of total cargo passing through the transport corridor.

Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, 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.

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 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.

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

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

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