25/05/2005

Giant BP-operated oil pipeline is opened

Presidents and oil company executives have opened a 1,100 mile BP-operated pipeline today that will carry oil from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean for the first time ever.

The 1,770 kilometre pipeline will carry one million barrels of oil a day from the BP-run Azeri Chirag Gunashli (ACG) oilfield in the Caspian Sea to the eastern Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, BP Chief Executive Lord Browne, described the project as “an heroic engineering achievement, as ground-breaking in today’s context as Prudhoe Bay and the Trans-Alaskan pipeline were 30 years ago”.

He continued: “The pipeline opens up massive new fields in the Caspian Sea to world markets, enhancing security of supply for decades to come. And it does so in a way that avoids the transit of large numbers of tankers through the narrow and congested Bosphorus.”

As well as the ACG oil field and BTC pipeline, the projects include the Shah Deniz gas field and associated South Caucasus pipeline, which will be completed in 2006.

Once fully on stream by 2008, ACG will provide approximately one million barrels of oil a day to world markets.

(CD/SP)

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