First ship loads oil from new Caspian pipeline

A cargo of around 600,000 barrels of crude oil from Azerbaijan was loaded on to the BP tanker, British Hawthorn, which sailed from the terminal on Monday.

The loading followed the completion of the testing, commissioning and filling of the BTC pipeline along its entire 1,768-kilometre route across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, from the Sangachal terminal on the Caspian coast near Baku to the Ceyhan terminal.

A total of 10 million barrels of oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea were required to complete the filling of the pipeline, which began in May 2005.

The loading marks the start of the export of Azerbaijan's oil via the BTC oil pipeline to world markets, without passing through the crowded Turkish straits. The pipeline currently serves only the ACG fields but is expected, longer term, to attract volumes from other parts of the region.

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