Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Lord Browne described the project as "heroic engineering achievement, as ground-breaking in today's context as Prudhoe Bay and the Trans-Alaskan pipeline were 30 years ago."
"The pipeline opens up massive new fields in the Caspian Sea to world markets, enhancing security of supply for decades to come. And it does so in a way that avoids the transit of large numbers of tankers through the narrow and congested Bosphorous."
The pipeline was officially inaugurated on Wednesday at the Sangachal terminal, near Baku, by the presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kazakhstan and heads of the companies involved in the project.
The construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline was worth about $3.6 billion. It was built by the BTC international consortium with 30% owned by BP.
According to BP experts, the pipeline will provide revenues to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey of more than $150 billion between 2005 and 2024.
