BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 11. Türkiye plans
to make greater use of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline’s
transportation capacity and attract oil resources from Central Asia
and other Turkic states to the infrastructure, Türkiye’s Minister
of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar said in an
exclusive interview with Trend as part of the 5th Azerbaijan-Türkiye Energy
Forum.


The minister said the BTC pipeline plays an important role in
ensuring energy supply security for the region and Europe.


According to him, around 500,000-600,000 barrels of crude oil
are transported daily through BTC from the Ceyhan terminal to
global markets. Noting that the pipeline’s transportation capacity
is higher, Bayraktar emphasized the importance of bringing oil
resources from Central Asia and other Turkic states into the
infrastructure.


“Our goal is to bring the oil of Central Asia and the Turkic
world into this line as well and fully utilize the existing
infrastructure,” he said.


The minister said the energy partnership between Azerbaijan and
Türkiye, which began in the 1990s, has expanded from oil and
natural gas production to transportation.


He noted that the TANAP and TAP projects play an important role
in delivering Azerbaijani natural gas to Türkiye and Europe via
Türkiye.


“The total volume of Azerbaijani gas transported through TANAP
has already exceeded 100 billion cubic meters,” Bayraktar said.


The BTC oil pipeline has a total length of 1,768 kilometers.







The pipeline was built to ensure the safe transportation of
crude oil produced in the Caspian region to the Mediterranean
coast.


The project contributes to strengthening economic and political
ties between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Türkiye and Western countries,
while also generating significant revenues for the transit
countries.


Since the pipeline became operational, thousands of social
initiatives have been implemented along its route, benefiting more
than 750,000 people in over 550 settlements.


BTC has a transportation capacity of 1 million barrels of oil
per day. The pipeline uses pipes with diameters of 46, 42 and 34
inches and has eight pumping stations and 98 block valve stations.
Along its route, the pipeline crosses several mountain ranges, more
than 3,000 roads, railway and communication lines, as well as more
than 1,500 bodies of water, including the Ceyhan River, which is up
to 500 meters wide.


Considered one of the largest and most complex engineering
projects of its time, construction of BTC took four years, from
project approval in July 2002 to completion in May 2006. At the
peak of construction, 22,000 people worked on the project, around
80 percent of whom were local specialists.


The first batch of oil was loaded onto the British Hawthorn
tanker at the Ceyhan terminal on June 4, 2006.