Pipeliners

03 April 2007 - Upstream onLine - The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) saw its exports of Kazakh oil to the Black Sea fall by around 100,000 barrels per day in March from an all-time high in February. The Chevron-led pipeline group said its March exports fell to 22.01 million barrels or 710,000 bpd, down from 804,000 bpd in February. Traders have said February volumes were surprisingly high as they were 15% above the pipeline's designed capacity of around 35 million tonnes per year (700,000 bpd). The group has said it had optimised throughput capacity of the pipeline. CPC badly needs to expand to accommodate rising output from Kazakhstan from its top shareholders, which also include ExxonMobil, Shell, Lukoil and BP . But the group's plan to double capacity to 1.35 million bpd has been on ice for years as Moscow opposes expansion before CPC changes its shipping fees to pay more revenues to the Russian government. The group exports oil from a terminal near the Russian port of Novorossiisk, which is often closed in winter due to heavy storms. Russian companies such as Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz and TNK-BP also pump crude via CPC. Their crude is unloaded from Russian trunk pipelines and travels a short distance by rail to be loaded onto the CPC system on Russian territory close to Novorossiisk. Russian shippers exported 84,000 bpd via CPC in March, down 8.8% on February 2007, Reuters said.