The South Caucasus Pipeline Company (SCPC) announced that the technical operatorship of the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) has been transferred from multinational oil and gas company bp to SOCAR Midstream Operations, a fully-owned subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s oil company SOCAR.
“We have been the commercial operator of SCP since 2015, conducting all commercial operations of the pipeline on a high level,” commented Rovnag Abdullayev, President of SOCAR. “ Now SOCAR takes over the technical operatorship of SCP as envisaged in the pipeline owners’ agreement.”
The transfer covers the operation of all dedicated SCP facilities in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The facilities that are common to both the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and SCP will continue to be operated by bp in its capacity as a common operator.
“As an SCPC shareholder, we have always been pleased with the safety of SCP operations, which have been among the best in the industry,” continued Mr Abdullayev. “We would like to thank bp for their excellent partnership and operatorship. As the new technical operator, we will use our successful international experience and work closely with all of our partners to sustain the high level of safety, reliability and environmental performance of SCP.”
“We believe SOCAR has great experience of safe and efficient project delivery,” added Gary Jones, bp’s Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. “This was demonstrated during the four years of successful construction followed by the safe operation of TANAP [the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline]. In addition, SOCAR has been a very effective commercial operator of SCP for nearly five years now. We remain committed to helping SOCAR in the planned management of the change process to ensure that the transition is completed safely and with no impact on the overall gas transportation operations.”
