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South Caucasus Pipeline Company
The South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) is a gas exportation pipeline that exports gas from the Shah Deniz gas field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea to Georgia and Turkey for distribution. The 692km-long pipeline started delivering gas to Azerbaijan & Georgia in 2006. Delivery to Turkey commenced in 2007.
The pipeline is now being expanded to accommodate additional gas from the second stage of the Shah Deniz development project. Upon its completion in 2017, the pipeline’s capacity will have been increased by 16 billion cubic metres per annum (bcma) to 23bcma.
The engineering contractor CB&I was awarded the FEED, detailed engineering and procurement services for the expansion project and subsequently approached ABLE Instruments & Controls Ltd to supply the Radar Level Transmitters for same. These were predominantly guided wave variants, some in chambers, some in bridles and some deployed directly in the vessels. Applications included hydrocarbon, water and diesel level.
The SCP is owned by South Caucasus Pipeline Company, a consortium of seven national and international energy companies which include BP (25.5%), the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) (10%), Statoil (25.5%), Lukoil (10%), Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO) (10%), Total (10%) and the national oil and gas company of Turkey (TPAO) (9%).
BP is the technical operator looking after the development and production activities, while Statoil is the commercial operator taking care of all business development and administration matters relating to the pipeline.
The SCP project was sanctioned for construction and operation as part of the Shah Deniz Stage 1 development in February 2003. The construction on the project was launched in 2004 and completed in the last quarter of 2006 with an investment of about $1bn. The pipeline runs parallel and proximate to Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil pipeline. The SCP originates at the Sangachal Terminal, which is located approximately 45km south of Baku, and traverses Azerbaijan and Georgia before terminating at Erzurum in eastern Turkey. The lengths of Georgia’s and Turkey’s sections are 442km and 248km respectively. The pipeline is buried throughout the route and is designed for an operational life of 30 years. It has a diameter of 42in and is designed to transmit 7bcm of gas annually. It is protected against corrosion by applying a combination of three-layer polyethylene (PE) coating system and an impressed current cathodic protection (CP) system. In addition to the pipeline’s construction, the SCP project involved a number of above ground installations including two compressor stations (one each in Azerbaijan and Georgia), an intermediate pigging station (cleaning and inspection purposes) and 11 small block valves.