BTC closed for two weeks after fire

ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline could remain closed for another two weeks following a fire that consumed 12,000 barrels of crude oil in eastern Turkey.

Westward oil supplies from Azerbaijan were disrupted when a fire broke out on a Turkish section of the 1,099-mile pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

Officials at the state-owned Turkish energy firm Botas said oil stocks at the Ceyhan port have dried up as a result of the disruption, Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman said Thursday.

Botas said fire officials could take longer than expected to control the blaze. Officials at British Petroleum, the majority shareholder in the BTC pipeline consortium, said it began diverting Azeri natural resources to other routes Thursday.

A statement reportedly from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility for the event. Separatists with the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia also had threatened to bomb the pipeline should Tbilisi launch a military incursion.

The pipeline carries about 1 percent of the world's oil supplies.