BP to Increase BTE Capacity to 60 BCM a Year

BP has agreed to increase the capacity of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) gas pipeline, also known as the South Caucasus pipeline, to up to 60 billion cubic metres a year.

The agreement was made with the Azeri government and was announced by Deputy Energy Minister Natig Abbasov today at a conference in Azerbaijan. Initially, the agreement will see BP increase the capacity of  the pipeline to 35 billion cubic metres a year, increasing to 60 billion cubic metres in time.

"Such an increase may be conducted before 2017 or 2018," Azeri news outlet ABC reports him as saying today . "In the future, the capacity of this infrastructure will be increased up to 60 bn cu m a year.

"Additional expansion depends on the commissioning of new gas fields in Azerbaijan and organization of Turkmen gas transit to Europe through Azerbaijan."

The BTE pipeline is a 692 kilometre pipeline that transports gas from the Azeri Shah Deniz field. The gas is then transported through Georgia to the Turkish-Georgia border. BP is the operator of the pipeline.