The world's second longest oil pipeline, that transfers oil from the Caspian Sea oil fields through conflict-ridden Georgia and onto Turkey's western coastline, is set to reopen as early as next week according to Turkey's energy minister, Himi Guler.
British oil giant BP announced that they began testing on the closed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), which was closed on August 5 after suffering a fire on a Turkish stretch of the line, on Wednesday in a necessary move to help restart operations as soon as possible.
Speaking on television Mr Guler said: "Production will begin in a few days if there are no problems."
However, a spokesman for BP, who owns a 30.1% stake in the pipeline, remained much apprehensive towards the scheduled reopening date. Murat Lecompte said that it was too early to say when the line would be operational again, despite the commencing of testing upon it.
The line, owned by a consortium of energy companies led by BP, has been closed for more than two weeks in the wake of the fire, which took firefighters six days to put out. Kurdish rebels have taken responsibility for the blaze. The claim is yet to be confirmed by Turkish officials.
Other major shareholders in the line, which usually carries around 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Caspian Sea crude oil to international markets include: US Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Norway's StatoilHydro, Italy's ENI and France's Total.
BP spokesman, Toby Odone, said: "We've taken the decision to start dynamic integrity testing of the line.
"This will involve some limited and intermittent flow of oil through the pipeline," he added.
BP's options to export Azeri oil from the Caspian Sea have been seriously curtailed by both the fire on the BTC line, which was inaugurated in 2006, and by further Russian military activity in Georgia since its closure.
BP's problems were compounded when it was also stopped from using a railway line that exports Azeri oil through Georgia, following reports of damage to the line, which has the capability to carry between 50,000 and 70,000 barrels of Azeri oil to the Black Sea port of Batumi every day.
Georgian officials accused Russia, on Saturday, of blowing up a key railway bridge on the line severing the country's main east-west rail route. Georgian officials later vowed to restore the link within a week.
As a result BP has been forced to reduce its production in its Caspian Sea oil fields because of the pipeline closures. Analysts predict that production may have dropped by as much as a third, from the 800,000 bpd that was being produced prior to damage to the BTC line.