Bosphorus Sea News

A leading U.S. tanker brokerage has warned that the newly-opened Khazakstan to Novorossiisk oil pipeline will need between 17 and 28 million-barrel tankers to serve it, further clogging the congested Bosphorus sea lane. New York-based Poten and Partners foresaw pipeline capacity starting at 560,000 bpd and eventually reaching 1.34 million bpd. "This level of throughput may start bumping against the upper limit of allowable tanker transits through the Bosphorus," it said. The analysis comes in the same week that the Turkish minister for maritime affairs, Ramazan Mirzaoglu, announced a state investigation into the safety threat posed by swelling Bosphorus tanker traffic. "The Turkish straits are already at their limits.