By Xinhua,
Ankara : The fire caused by a Tuesday night explosion at Refahiye part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline continues on Wednesday, Turkish semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
Turkish officials were quoted as saying that the explosion took place at one of the pumps of the pipeline in Refahiye town of Erzican province in eastern Turkey, and that the fire continues as there is still oil inside the pump.
“The cooling efforts are under way. The fire may continue until the oil inside the pump runs out. However, the region is totally under control,” officials also said.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.
Meanwhile, authorities said the flow of natural gas in a nearby pipeline, which had been suspended due to the fire at the crude oil pipeline, has resumed.
The BTC pipeline is a crude oil pipeline that covers 1,768 km from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Connecting Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and Ceyhan, a port on the south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, it is the second longest oil pipeline in the world.