“I hope we will sign an agreement within 1.5-2 months and join the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline project. The pipeline will be called Aktau-Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, and the Aktau-Baku segment will be independent,” he is reported to have said.
If the project goes ahead, tankers would be loaded with Kazakh crude in the ports of Aktau and Kuryk in the western Mangistau district of the country, on the Caspian Sea, and head for Baku, from where the crude would be transported onwards. The Caspian port of Kuryk will become the leading oil port in Kazakhstan, Mr Shkolnik said.