An official ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Turkish-Azeri oil pipeline will be held on July 13, the Turkish Weekly is reporting.
The first drop of oil made its way on Sunday night from Baku, on the Caspian Sea, through the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, and onto Turkey’s Mediterranean port Ceyhan.
Construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline began six years ago. BTC is 1,105 miles long, of which 672 miles pass through Turkey.
The presidents and prime ministers of the three countries will participate in the inauguration ceremony. The pipeline, which cost $3 billion, will initially transfer about 300,000 barrels per day, a figure which is expected to rise to a million barrels daily in the next three to four years.
BTC is expected to provide Turkey with some $300 million a year in revenues. It will also help the Georgian and Azerbaijani economies. Economists estimate that by 2010 revenues from this project will double Azerbaijan’s current gross domestic product.
Already, however, the threat of terror is looming over the project. The Turkish and Georgian authorities fear possible attacks on the pipeline by the PKK Kurdish organization in Turkey and separatist groups in Georgia.