The milestone was achieved on 14 July when the 3 billionth barrel of Caspian crude flowed through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, was loaded on the 3929th tanker and headed for world markets, according to BP.
The first tanker with BTC oil was lifted from the Ceyhan Terminal also on one of the hot summer days back in 2006. The first cargo of about 600,000 barrels of Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli crude, which had traveled 1,768 km across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey through the BTC pipeline to Ceyhan, was loaded onto the tanker British Hawthorn and sailed away from the new Ceyhan Marine Terminal on 4 June 2006.
"The lifting of the 3 billionth barrel of oil from Ceyhan is a remarkable milestone achieved by BTC. Since the start of operations, the pipeline has demonstrated exceptional efficiency," BP’s Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gary Jones said.
It was built as a huge engineering achievement and after 12 years of safe, reliable and responsible operations it can be described as an extraordinary example of operational efficiency and world class delivery of One Team across the three countries," Trend cited him as saying.
