BTJ restores oil pumping

Oil pumping on the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeykhan (BTJ) pipeline, halted due to
an oil leakage on the Turkish section near Erzurum, has been fully
restored, BP (operator of the pipeline on the territory of Azerbaijan
and Georgia) said on Thursday, Trend reports.

Botas had earlier requested oil pumping be stopped .

The problem did not affect the operations of the company. The
Azeri-Chyrag-Guneshli block continued extraction of oil in the
Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian. Oil was being transported from
Sangachal oil terminal near Baku and unloaded from Jekhan terminal.
According to the information on December 1, Jekhan oil terminal
unloaded 1.064 million barrels of oil since June 2, 2006, coming from
the BTJ, compared with 1.04 million barrels on November 1.

BTJ has a total length of 1768 km, 443 km lie in Azerbaijan, 249 km -
in Georgia, 1076 km - in Turkey. Construction of the pipeline started
in April 2003, it was filled with oil in May 2005.

The pipeline is worth $4 billion, excluding the expenses of filling
the pipeline and payments of bank rates. The general financial credit
is worth $2.6 billion.

BTJ Co shareholders are BP (30.1%), AzBTC (25%), Chevron (8.9%),
StatoilHydro (8.71%), TPAO (6.53%), Eni (5%), Total (5%), Itochu
(3.40%), Inpex (2.5%), ConocoPhillips (2.50%) and Hess (2.36%).