The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which is still ablaze after an explosion, may not reopen for another one to two weeks, a senior source at Turkey's state-owned pipeline company Botas told Reuters on Thursday. Stocks at the Ceyhan depot, which had been used to keep the one million barrels per day (bpd) pipeline flowing have run dry, the source said, following the explosion on Tuesday night. Opened in 2006, the pipeline is the first to carry large volumes of Caspian crude without going through Russia. The Botas source said the fire could take two more days to put out, while the repair of the pipeline would take one to two weeks. The Ceyhan depot has capacity of seven million barrels. Trade sources said loadings of Azeri crude at Ceyhan had now been halted. "There is no loading," a shipping agent said. Kurdish separatists claimed responsibility for the blast which caused the blaze and helped to push oil prices higher.
