A consortium made up of oil and gas major Eni and Turkish Çalık Energy expects to start building a pipeline that will carry Caspian oil to the Mediterranean by 2010. Eni is expected to finance 100% of the pipeline, which is expected to cost USD 4 billion. The company will use its oil in its Kazakh Kashagan and Karachaganak fields to start the pipeline throughput. The line will run from the Black Sea port of Samsun to the Mediterranean energy hub of Ceyhan, bypassing Turkey's increasingly congested İstanbul and Çanakkale Straits. The pipeline is expected to have a capacity of 1 million barrels per day. The consortium is in talks with stakeholders of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which includes US Chevron, Russia's Transneft, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Lukoil.
