Pipeliners

TBILISI, October 12 (RIA Novosti, Marina Kvaratskhelia) - The opening ceremony of the Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline will be held Wednesday. The Georgian, Azerbaijani, and Turkish presidents Mikhail Saakashvili, Ilham Aliyev, and Ahmet Necdet Sezer, as well as U.S. Ambassador to Georgia John Tefft, senators from California, and BTC Co. president Michael Townshend, will attend the ceremony, the Georgian presidential news service said. Oil will be transported from Azerbaijan's Sangachal field in the Caspian Sea through Georgia at the first pumping station in the Gardaban district on the Georgian-Azerbaijani border. In late October, oil supplies will reach the Georgian-Turkish border. The BTC pipeline consortium comprises operator British Petroleum with a 30.1% stake; Azerbaijan's State Oil Company with 25%; American companies Unocal (8.9%), Conoco-Phillips (2.5%), and Amerada Hess (2.35%); Norway's Statoil (8.7%); Turkey's TPAO (6.5%); Italy's ENI (5%); French-Belgian TotalFinaElf (5%); and Japanese-based Itochu and Inpex with 3.4% and 2.5%, respectively. The $3-billion pipeline runs from the Sangachal terminal in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan in southern Turkey, a total distance of 1,743 kilometers (about 1,100 miles), including 235km (150 miles) in Georgia. The pipeline will have an annual capacity of 50 million metric tons of oil.