BP-operated Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil export pipeline has loaded its 1,000th cargo of oil transported from the Sangachal terminal near Baku across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to Ceyhan.
The 1,000th tanker – the British Kestrel, arrived at the Ceyhan Marine Terminal on 17 December and will depart for Rotterdam as soon as the loading is completed.
The milestone tanker will take on board approximately 600,000 barrels of crude oil. The oil transported via BTC to world markets mainly comes from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and Shah Deniz fields in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.
The total volume of oil exported via BTC to date is about 791 million barrels (about 106 million tonnes). The current export rate via BTC is about 850,000 barrels per day with the highest daily flow-rate to date being 1,006,505 million barrels.
Since the start up of export operations in 2006, the pipeline has demonstrated excellent safety performance with over 20 million man hours worked without a single day away from work case, Elkhan Mammadov, Azerbaijan exports operations manager comments.