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BP-led group to pay Turkey's Botas 333 mln usd for pipeline cost overruns

06 June 2006 [21:02] - TODAY.AZ
The British Petroleum-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline consortium said it will pay Turkey's Botas oil and gas company 333 mln usd for cost overruns in the Turkish section of the pipeline.

'The size of Botas' claim has been determined, and both sides have agreed to this amount,' said Vagif Aliyev, head of the foreign investment department of Azerbaijan's SOCAR state oil company, a member of the consortium.

However, a spokeswoman for BP in Azerbaijan declined to confirm or dispute the figure, and said talks with Botas were still underway, AFX reports.

She said the total cost for the pipeline construction would be 'under 4 bln usd,' though that amount does not include the cost of filling the pipeline, which required more than 10 mln barrels of oil.

The 1,760-kilometre pipeline links Azerbaijani oil fields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, opening an outlet to Western markets for some of Azerbaijan's vast Caspian Sea oil and gas wealth.

BP announced in April that the construction cost was likely to exceed the original estimate of 2.95 bln usd by some 30 percent.

The first 600,000-barrel tanker-load was lifted from the pipeline on Sunday.

The pipeline is currently pumping 200,000 barrels a day into storage tankers in Ceyhan, BP said. It foresees that the pipeline will pump 300,000 to 400,000 barrels a day by year end.

The pipeline will stop pumping oil for 10 days later this month to allow for the final stages of construction, BP's associate president in Azerbaijan, David Woodward, told journalists.

/www.forbes.com/

URL: http://www.today.az/news/business/26971.html

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