The first barrels of Azerbaijani oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli deposit in the Caspian shelf crossed the two countries' border on 11 August, and it will take about 30 days to fill the 250-km section of the pipeline running through the country. The pipeline-filling process started at Baku in May, and more than 2.3 million out of the required 10 million barrels of oil have now been pumped into the pipeline. According to the Azeri operating company, the first tanker loaded with Caspian oil will leave the Turkish port of Ceyhan before the end of 2005. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline cost about $4 billion to construct, and its flow rate will be 1 billion brl/d, equivalent to 50 million tons/yr.