Turkey’s Role for the Tanker Market
Even though the coup attempt in Turkey failed and the transportation situation normalized quickly thereafter, Poten & Partners take a look at the importance of Turkey to the tanker market.
According to MANA, Turkey is not a large oil or gas producer; according to JODI its crude oil production amounts to about 48 thousand barrels per day (Kb/d) of crude oil and almost 400 million m3 of natural gas in 2015. The country’s oil consumption averaged about 927 Kb/d in 2015, about 1% of the global consumption.
Two major oil pipelines run through the country: The BakuTbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline with a capacity of about 1.2 Mb/d connects the Caspian oil fields to the Mediterranean and the 1.5 Mb/d Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, which is the main outlet for crude oil from Northern Iraq.
The IEA estimates that the BTC pipeline carries about 0.6 Mb/d of crude oil, mainly from Azerbaijan. In 2015, the pipeline has also been used for small volumes of exports from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
According to Lloyd’s Apex tanker trade data, about 85% of the Iraqi exports through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline remain in the Med. About 70% of these exports use Suezmax tonnage and almost all of the remaining exports are on Aframax tonnage.
In 2015, about 80 million tons (about 1.6 Mb/d) of oil passed through the Bosporus. During the first half of 2016, about 70% of the total transits were destined for the Med, and 16% for the remainder of Europe.