August 12, 2008	Tuesday	Sha'aban 9, 1429

ANKARA: A fire at a major oil pipeline in eastern Turkey, sparked by a blast last week, was extinguished on Monday, officials told Anatolia news agency.

Separatist Kurdish rebels claimed responsibility for the blast, which ripped through a section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in Erzincan province late on Aug 5, causing fresh jitters at the world oil markets.

Turkish officials have played down the possibility of a sabotage, adding that the definite cause of the blast could be determined after the fire was extinguished.

An official from Turkey’s state-run gas and oil company BOTAS said last week that repair work at the pipeline was expected to take about 15 days.

Inaugurated in 2006, the 1,774-kilometre BTC pipeline carries Azeri oil from the Caspian Sea fields to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, from where tankers transport the crude to western markets.

The conduit has faced further risks since last Friday as tensions in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia escalated into a full-blown military conflict.—AFP