BP’s BTC Pipeline Shipped Less Azeri Oil in January, Socar Says

The BP Plc-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline shipped less Azeri crude oil last month, according to State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan, or Socar, a partner in the project.

The BTC link carried 2.57 million metric tons of oil in January, down 7.2 percent from a year earlier, data on Socar’s website show. The company didn’t give a reason for the decline.

Azerbaijan, the largest oil producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia and Kazakhstan, pumped 43 million metric tons of oil in 2012, down 5.3 percent from 2011, the State Statistics Committee said Jan. 17. Production of marketable natural gas rose 5.4 percent to 17.2 billion cubic meters, it said.

The 1,768-kilometer (1,100-mile) BTC link, which connects Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea coast with Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan via Georgia, also carried 196,447 tons of Turkmen oil in January, down from 318,158 tons a year earlier, Socar said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zulfugar Agayev in Baku at zagayev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Hellmuth Tromm at htromm@bloomberg.net