10-10-00 Representatives of Georgia's state railway agency said late last month that the TengizChevroil (TCO) joint venture had exported 2.4 mm tons of oil via the Baku-Batumi corridor in the first eight months of the year.
Some 14 % of the January-August total, or 336,000 tons, was transported along this route in the month of August along, they said. They noted that some 2.4 mm tons of Kazakhstani oil had been shipped from Baku to Batumi in 1999.
Eventually, they said, TCO may export up to 4 mm tpy of oil along this route. They also noted that the Georgian railway authority had been able to cut the tariff for transportation to Batumi from $ 8.5 per ton to $ 5.0 per ton as a result of increased transport volumes.
Chevron, operator of the TCO venture, began transporting oil from the Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan across the Caspian Sea and through the southern Caucasus in late 1997. It first sends crude across the sea by tanker. The oil is then loaded into pipelines near Baku and pumped to a nearby terminal for loading into rail cars bound for Batumi.

The US company has said in the past that it hoped eventually to build a pipeline across the southern Caucasus. Georgia has indicated that it would support such a plan. Indeed, in late August of this year, Gia Chanturia, the president of the Georgian International Oil Corporation (GIOC), said that it would only cost $ 60-70 mm to clean and repair the old Soviet-era pipeline from Baku to Batumi. Once the pipeline is properly rehabilitated, Chanturia said, it could be used to carry Kazakhstani oil.
Chevron and its partners plan to export most oil from Tengiz via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) link to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. However, TCO is also interested in alternative outlets as the CPC pipeline is not due to come on line until the middle of next year.