Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline

The 1,768 kilometer Caspian oil pipeline from Baku to the Mediterranean that bypasses both Russia and Hormuz.

Overview

Opened in 2006 by a BP-led consortium, BTC carries Azeri Light crude from the Caspian across Georgia to the Turkish terminal at Ceyhan, with capacity around 1.2 million barrels a day. Its politics were the point: the 1990s contracts committed Caspian exports to a westward route independent of Russian transit and of Gulf chokepoints. Periodic sabotage and mountain terrain test operations. The corridor later gained a gas sibling through the Southern Gas Corridor pipelines. BTC is the textbook case of export route diversification as state strategy.