Pipeliners

13 August, 2008 - Upstream OnLine - BP and Turkish pipeline player Botas have started damage assessment work at the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in eastern Turkey following a fire last week. BP and partners are now able to access the BTC pipeline after it cooled down, company spokesman Toby Odone said to Bloomberg today The assessment will take "a week or so", he added. "It'll take quite a while to work out what has happened," Odone said. The Turkish authorities are also investigating the cause of the explosion, he said. The fire on the BTC link, which has a 1 million barrel per day capacity, broke out on 5 August following an explosion in the Erzincan province. The Kurdistan Workers' Party claimed responsibility for the attack. BP and Botas denied the terror group's claim. The fire on the 1768-kilometre pipeline, which links Azerbaijan through Georgia with the Turkish port of Ceyhan, was extinguished on 11 August and took about two days to cool down. Meanwhile, BP declared force majeure on liftings from the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline following its shut-down yesterday. BP closed the 150,000 barrels per day route to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast from Baku, Azerbaijan due to the conflict between Georgia and Russia.