BTC oil pipeline damage study may take a week -BP

LONDON Aug 13 (Reuters) - It could take a week to judge how long the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in Turkey will remain closed after a fire at the start of August, a major shareholder in the pipeline said on Wednesday.

The pipeline stopped carrying Azeri crude through Georgia after an explosion on Turkish territory, for which Kurdish separatist guerrillas claimed responsibility, two days before conflict over the South Ossetia region began.

After waiting for the pipeline to cool down following the fire, Turkish pipeline operator Botas has started assessing the damage, a spokesman for British oil major BP (BP.L) said.

"Botas is doing that and the police are obviously there to find out the cause," the spokesman said, adding it was too early to say how long repairs to the $4 billion pipeline would take.

"That will be determined once the assessment has been done," he said.

A source at state-owned Botas said on Monday the repairs to the pipeline, which can carry up to a million barrels of high quality Azeri crude, could take several weeks.

BP owns 30.1 percent of BTC, while Azeri state oil company Socar holds 25 percent. Other stakeholders include U.S. companies Chevron (CVX.N) and ConocoPhillips (COP.N), Norway's StatoilHydro (STL.OL), Italy's ENI (ENI.MI) and France's Total (TOTF.PA).

GEORGIAN PIPELINES

Another BP spokesman said the British oil major's Caspian oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Supsa in Georgia remained closed on Wednesday as the company awaited word from Georgian authorities that it was safe to reopen.

"From our point of view its the same as it was yesterday afternoon," the spokesman said.

"The oil line to Supsa remains closed as a precaution but there is no damage."

BP also stopped pumping gas from the Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea into the South Caucasus Pipeline as fighting between Russia and Georgia rumbled on Tuesday.

That pipeline, which runs from Baku through Georgia and into Turkey, remained closed on Wednesday afternoon, BP said.

There was still some gas in the 692-km underground gas pipeline for Turkey on Wednesday, BP said, but Botas has already boosted imports from Iran to make up for the fall in supplies.

The closure on Tuesday of the Western Route Export Pipeline (WREP), which takes crude from the Caspian Sea to the Georgian port of Supsa on the Black Sea further limits BP's export options after the BTC fire.

The BTC fire forced offshore Azeri fields to cut output from 800,000 barrels per day to 250,000 bpd, according to trade sources. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren; editing by James Jukwey)