BTC oil pipeline issues

In the first quarter of 2011, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transported 8.6 mln tons of oil which is lower than the same period of last year. The biggest shareholder of the BTC pipeline is Azeri company SOCAR. The pipeline is having some problems as the management of Turkish company Botas stated recently and due to these problems the company is suffering losses. This news is highly publicized by Russian news agencies, as BTC was initially created as an alternative rout for pumping Caspian oil into the rest of the world.