Pipeliners

06.05.2005 MosNews - Azerbaijan plans to almost double its oil shipments through Russia in 2005. The transit will take place via a key pipeline linking Baku on the Caspian Sea and Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. The volumes will increase to 4.0-4.5 million tons, a senior Azeri oil official said on Friday, May 6, Reuters reported.
Natik Aliyev, head of Azerbaijan’s State Oil Fund, told reporters that in 2004 shipments through the pipeline which takes Azeri oil to international markets equaled 2.6 million tons. He added the rise would be mainly due to higher oil shipments by his firm and Britain’s British Petroleum.
BP leads an international group developing the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields, which have estimated recoverable reserves of 5.4 billion barrels and planned production of over 1 million barrels per day by 2009. The group includes U.S. firms ExxonMobil, Unocal, Delta Hess and Devon Energy, Japan’s Itochu and INPEX, Norway’s Statoil, Turkey’s TPAO and SOCAR.