(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 1. Russia's LUKOIL
will suspend its oil exports from its Caspian fields through the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline starting from December, due to
Western sanctions imposed on Russia, and, thus, will redirect them
to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline system.
As Azerbaijani energy expert Ilham Shaban told trend , oil from Kazakhstan
will completely replace Russian oil in the BTC. He recalled that
LUKOIL sent its first oil batch through the BTC in May 2015.
'This was a trial supply, and since the results were financially
acceptable, the company started commercial pipeline deliveries in
2016. How did this benefit Azerbaijan? Of course, the growth of
transit traffic. There is also another point. Speaking on November
30, 2019 in the village of Ipsala in the Turkish province of Edirne
in the opening ceremony of the part of the Trans-Anatolian Natural
Gas Pipeline (TANAP) project, which secures gas supplies to Europe,
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said that Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
has become an excellent infrastructure project not only for
Azerbaijani oil, but also for other countries, and it is
successfully functioning today. The Head of State noted that, at
that time, more than 450 million tons of oil from Azerbaijan and
other countries have been transported to the Turkish and world
markets via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Most of this, more
than 400 million tons, is Azerbaijani oil, 27 million tons is
Turkmen oil, 12 million tons is Kazakh oil and 7 million tons is
Russian oil,' the expert said.
He noted that the figures mentioned by President Ilham Aliyev at
that moment showed that 15 percent of all oil transported through
the BTC was from Russia.
According to the statistics from Petroleum Argus, the volume of
Russian oil transported through the BTC monthly in the current year
amounted to 60,000 - 120,000 tons. During the 10 months of 2022,
the volume of transit through the BTC totaled 4.31 million tons. In
other words, this 15-percent share actually remained, the expert
explained.
As Shabanov rightly pointed out, at first glance, the loss of
LUKOIL supplies, due to Western sanctions, is the damage to the BTC
shareholders.
'However, if we take into account that 1.5 million tons of oil
per year, or 120,000 tons per month, will be supplied from the
Tengiz field in Kazakhstan starting from January 2023, this will
not only replace Russian oil completely, but will also open up the
way to larger volumes. Therefore, there can be no question of loss
of income. Official Baku constantly declares at all levels that our
infrastructure is open to other parties. And the use of the BTC is
an example for other energy-producing countries. It also means that
Azerbaijan's export infrastructure will bring profit to those
countries that have normal good-neighborly relations with our
country. Transportation of Russian oil via the BTC has become
impossible for reasons beyond our control,' the expert
concluded.
Meanwhile, the shareholders of BTC Co, which was established on
August 1, 2002 to implement the project, are: bp (30.1 percent),
AzBTC (25 percent), MOL (8.9 percent), Equinor (8.71 percent), TRAO
(6.53 percent), Eni (5 percent), Total (5 percent), Itochu (3.4
percent), Inpex (2.5 percent), ExxonMobil (2.5 percent) and ONGC
(2.36 percent).
According to the State Statistical Committee, the transportation
of transit oil via the BTC from January through October 2022
amounted to 4,131 million tons, compared to 2,815 million tons over
the same period of 2021 - an increase of 46.7 percent
year-on-year.
During the reporting period, 24.428 million tons of oil were
transported through the BTC, which is 78.8 percent of all oil
(31.003 million tons) pumped through the main oil pipelines of
Azerbaijan. At the same time, 21.777 million tons, or 74.9 percent
of all oil transported (almost 29,090 million tons) were supplied
through the BTC from January through October 2021.
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