Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, June 8 -- Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said his country will become part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline this month after it signs a formal agreement with Azerbaijan.
The document is expected to be signed on June 17. Kazakhstan had support from US President George W Bush, who sent a letter to Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev.
In April, Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan Pipeline Co. representatives talked with numerous oil producers in Kazakhstan about securing crude oil for transmission (OGJ Online, Apr. 21, 2006).
The first tanker with 700,000 bbl of crude oil from the pipeline left the Turkish port of Ceyhan on June 6.
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].