BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan.13. To maintain the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) blend’s price premium, bp and other shippers will not want to accept too much Kashagan crude with its mercaptan impurities, Trend reports with reference to Wood Mackenzie.
“For Kazakhstan, 2023 will be a year of renewed oil export diversification. After unprecedented disruption to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) in 2022, the country must mitigate the risks of its overreliance on a single route through Russia. However, Kazakhstan has no large-scale alternative to the CPC, which will add new capacity of its own via debottlenecking. Russia transit will still dominate Kazakh oil export flows. Secondary routes, especially cross-Caspian to Azerbaijan, are complex and constrained in the near term,” reads the report published by WoodMac.
The report says Kazakh crude will utilize Azerbaijan’s Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline throughout 2023, assuming bilateral terms are finalized.
“Other Kazakh oil heading to Azerbaijan could use the currently idle Western Route Export Pipeline (WREP) to Supsa on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. Despite 600,000 b/d of BTC ullage, the roadblocks for Kazakh liquids are earlier in the value chain. Debottlenecking investment needs to begin soon to unlock rail, port and Caspian tanker fleet capacity,” WoodMac experts believe.
Kazakhstan’s energy ministry earlier said that the country is considering three routes to transport oil through Azerbaijan, namely, Aktau-Baku -Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Aktau-Baku-Supsa and Aktau-Baku-Batumi.
Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister Elnur Soltanov has said that the country is waiting for guarantees from Kazakhstan regarding the volume of oil supposed to be transported via Baku-Supsa.