BAKU (Azerbaijan), March 28: Azerbaijan plans to double its oil output by 2010, the energy minister said on Wednesday. Natiq Aliyev said the Caspian nation's crude production, which stood at 32.3m tons last year, or an average of 649,000 barrels a day, would reach 65m tons, or 1.31 million barrels a day in 2010.

Aliyev said most of the oil would be produced at the Azeri-Chiraq-Guneshli fields, which will also account for the bulk of the nation's natural gas output -- expected to reach 30 billion cubic meters in 2010.

Crude supplies began last year via the $4 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that allows the West to tap oil from the Caspian Sea fields, estimated to hold the world's third-largest reserves, bypassing Russia and Iran.

Washington staunchly supported the 1,768-km pipeline as part of a strategy to tap sources of crude outside of the Middle East and draw the Caspian states away from Russia and closer to the West. A natural gas pipeline is also being considered.—AP