The explosion caused a major disruption to oil supplies [AFP]

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) line, the world's second-longest pipeline, was closed down on August 5 after an explosion in a pump at a section in eastern Turkey sparked a fire.

It took firefighters six days to put out the resulting blaze.

"An intensive effort is under way... production will begin again in a few days if there are no problems," Hilmi Guler, Turkey's energy minister said in televised remarks on Monday.

However, Murat Lecompte, a spokesman for British Petroleum, a shareholder in the pipeline, said that it was too early to say when it could be operational again.

Kurdish activists waging a 24-year armed campaign against the Ankara government claimed responsibility for the blast, but Guler said there was no indication so far of foul play.

Inaugurated in 2006, the 1,774-km BTC pipeline carries Azeri oil from the Caspian Sea fields to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, and is capable of transporting 1.2 million barrels of crude per day.

Oil tensions

Oil supplies have faced further threats with tensions in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia escalating into a full-blown military conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi.

Last week, Georgia claimed that Russian warplanes bombed the pipeline, but Moscow denied deliberately targeting it.

British oil company BP PLC has also stopped using a railway line that exports Azeri oil through Georgia, following reports of damage to the line, which can carry between 50,000 and 70,000 barrels of oil a day.

Georgian officials accused Russia of blowing up a key railway bridge on the line on Saturday, severing the country's main east-west rail route. Officials later vowed to restore the link within a week.

The problems on the railway line compound BP's decision last week to shut down its Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, which runs through the centre of Georgia from Baku in Azerbaijan to Supsa on the Black Sea coast.

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