The Baku Ceyhan Campaign
About the Baku-Ceyhan campaign
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- What is planned

- Colonialism

- Human rights and conflict

- Social development

- Climate change

- Environmental impacts

- BP's pipeline record

- What are these international financial institutions?

- Map of the project

- The companies involved
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What are BP’s plans?

If the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey pipelines system goes ahead as planned, it will be a vast social and industrial structure, a gathering of men, women and machines stretching 1,750 kilometres (1,087 miles) across hills and valleys, mountains and plains, fields and deserts, gardens and rivers. A complete system, running from the Azerbaijani oil and gas fields offshore in the Caspian Sea to a tanker terminal on the Turkish Mediterranean coast.

The largest part of the system is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which would carry 1 million barrels of oil per day, from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore oilfields, to a tanker terminal at Yumurtalik, just south of Ceyhan in Turkey. From there, the oil would be loaded onto three supertankers per day, which would carry it to Western Europe and the USA.

BP started construction in May 2003; however it has not yet secured the financing, including from public (taxpayers') money. The financing decision won't be made until at least December 2003. If the World Bank, European Bank of Reconstruction & Development and export credit agencies and governments decide not to back the pipeline, or even delay their decision, BP could be forced to stop work. At the moment, BP is building the pipeline from its own, and its partner oil companies', money.

Scar left by the East Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline, built in 2000 by Botas.
BP wants Botas to build its Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline along the same route in 2003
[Greg Muttitt / PLATFORM]

Caspian oil development (including BTC pipeline) official website: www.caspiandevelopmentandexport.com

There are also plans for a gas pipeline, which would run alongside the BTC pipeline for much of its length, called the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) (also known as the Shah Deniz pipeline, or the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline). This would carry at least 20 million cubic metres of natural gas per day, from the Shah Deniz offshore gasfield, to enter the Turkish gas distribution system at Erzurum.

BP wants to build the SCP line after it has finished building BTC, and to complete it by the end of 2005.

Both pipelines would come ashore from the Caspian at the Sangachal terminal, just south of Baku, which is currently used for the existing smaller ‘Early Oil’ pipelines from Baku to Novorossiysk and from Baku to Supsa

The pipelines system would remain in place for at least 40 years. A system through which would flow US$ 21 million worth of fuel every day, nearly $8 billion a year, or more than $230 billion in the system’s lifetime.

Map of the project JPG format 336K