August 28, 2008

Kazakhstan joining Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline project

Itar-Tass cited Mr Sauat Mynbayev Kazakh Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources while speaking at a meeting of the Kazakh-Azerbaijani intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation said Kazakhstan is close to the completion of the legal registration of documents on joining the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Mr Sauat Mynbayev said “The Kazakh side informed the Azerbaijani colleagues that literally tomorrow the republic’s upper house of parliament will consider the draft law on the ratification of the republic’s agreement with Azerbaijan on support and assistance in the transportation of oil along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system.”

He also noted that “experts of the Kazmunaigaz Company are staying in Azerbaijan and we hope in the short run to settle all technical nuances linked with the formation of the seas part of the Kazakh-Caspian transportation system.”

The lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament on March 26 approved the draft law on the ratification of the republic’s agreement with Azerbaijan on support and assistance in the transportation of oil along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system. The document envisages the creation of a new scheme of transportation of Kazakh oil via the Caspian Sea with its further pumping through this pipeline. The new oil transport infrastructure will be created with the implementation of this project.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is a crude oil pipeline that covers 1,768 kilometers from the Azeri-Chirag-Gyuneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. It connects Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan; Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia; and Ceyhan, a port on the south eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, hence its name. It is the second longest oil pipeline in the world after the Druzhba pipeline. The first oil that was pumped from the Baku end of the pipeline on May 10th 2005 reached Ceyhan on May 28th 2006.