Azerbaijani oil briefly resumes flowing through Baku-Supsa pipeline 

Oil from Azerbaijan's giant ACG oil field in the Caspian Sea briefly resumed flowing through the Baku-Supsa pipeline to the Georgian Black Sea coast for the first time in 10 months after a halt due to the Russia-Ukraine war, Report informs, citing Eurasianet.

BP, which operates both the ACG field and the Baku-Supsa pipeline, confirmed to Eurasianet on February 21 that flow had been restarted, with one tanker having collected a cargo over the previous weekend and a second tanker due to collect its cargo later in the week.

Flow through the pipeline was halted last year, first temporarily in March and then permanently in May, due to fears over the safety of shipping in the Black Sea following reports of free-floating mines. Exports were re-routed via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline through Türkiye.

BP said that flow to Supsa was restarted only as a result of the six-day closure of the BTC pipeline's export terminal at Ceyhan, on Türkiye's Mediterranean coast, due to the earthquakes that hit nearby on February 6.

Prior to the war, exports of Azerbaijani crude flowed to international markets through three separate pipelines, Baku-Supsa, BTC, and the Baku-Novorossiysk line through the Caucasus to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Flow through that third pipeline was also halted last year, for the same reasons, with the oil again re-routed through BTC.