First time oil import from Caspian

India will buy crude oil from the Caspian Sea for the first time. UK based BP will supply 600,000 barrels of crude oil to Bharat Petroleum Corporation from the port of Ceyhan in Turkey next month.

The cargo, starting from Azerbaijan, will come to the Georgian Supsa terminal in the Black Sea from where it will be shipped to India through the Suez Canal.

The cargo was bought from the spot market at the October Brent price, and is scheduled to be delivered at Mumbai by October-end or early November. Senior BPCL executives said the crude is Azeri Light and low sulphur in quality.

"It is superior to the West Asian crude which is largely heavy sulphur in quality," said an executive, adding that low sulphur crude helped in meeting emission norms of petrol and diesel.

Briefing reporters, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said, "The Caspian region had emerged as a significant oil reservoir. While quantity is not significant in commercial terms, it changes the geopolitics of our region since we have so far availed west Asian and the South American oil only."

Aiyar said it was a historical first giving India access to new oil in the 21st century. The minister was in Azerbaijan earlier this year after the partial opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which would further improve the supply of Caspian crude to the Mediterranean Sea.

The pipeline covers a distance of 1,760 km from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

This will be the world's second longest oil pipeline, with a capacity of 50 million tonne crude, connecting the Azerbaijan capital Baku, with the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, and Ceyhan, a port on the south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey.