BTC CREDIT AGREEMENT TO BE SIGNED BY DECEMBER
According to reports of BP an exact date has not yet been set but expected that the document will be signed in the third week of December in London.
The total amount of funds attracted for the project, including interest rates, will amount to $2.5 billion, with a total project cost of $3.6 billion, the source said. Direct construction costs will amount to $2.95 billion, of which 30% will be invested by shareholders and 70% will be received as credits. Other expenditures include the acquisition of 10 million barrels of oil to fill the pipeline, and servicing of credits.
Creditors for the project break down into four groups. Firstly we have international financial organizations (the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation), which will provide their own funds in addition to guarantees for credits from commercial banks. The second group includes export-credit agencies that will provide guarantees to commercial banks to finance supplies of materials and equipment from six economically developed countries -the U.S., Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy and France. The third group includes 10-30 commercial banks and the fourth group includes participants in the project - BP. Statoil, Total and ConocoPhillips, which may pay out a total of $800 million.
Participants in the BTC project are: British Petroleum (30.1%), SOCAR (25%), Unocal (8.9%), Statoil (8.71%), TPAO (6.53%), ENI (5%), Itochu (3.4%), ConocoPhillips (2.5%), Inpex (2.5%), TotalFinaElf (5%), and Amerada Hess (2.36%).
The future pipeline will stretch 1,767 kilometers (443 km through Azerbaijan, 248 km through Georgia and 1,076 km through Turkey) and will have a capacity of 50 million tonnes of oil per annum and will require 1.5 million tonnes of oil to fill it. The cost of the project is estimated at $2.95 billion. It is planned to complete construction work in the fourth quarter 2004 and to start exporting Azerbaijani oil from the port of Ceyhan in May 2005.
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