Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking at an investment summit in the commercial capital of the Central Asian country, Almaty, said: "This month we will sign an agreement with the Azerbaijani government on linking Kazakhstan to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline."

The 1,100-mile BTC pipeline enables Azerbaijan to supply crude from its oil fields off the Caspian coast to Western markets via the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

According to RIA Novosti news agency, the Kazakh president said, "The agreement will be signed during the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia in Almaty."

Under the agreement 25 million metric tons (183 mln bbl) of crude a year will be transported from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan. During the first stage, 7.5 mln tons (55 mln bbl) will be shipped from the Aktau port across the Caspian Sea each year, to Azerbaijan's capital Baku.

The volume of investment will be decided after the agreement is signed between the two countries' governments.

By the end of 2006, the BTC project will be pumping around 300,000 bbl/d of crude to the Mediterranean. The pipeline is expected to meet its throughput capacity of 1 mln bbl/d by 2008. Eventually, half of the pipeline's supplies will come from Azerbaijan and the other half from Kazakhstan.

The main shareholders in the BTC project are London-based oil major BP (30.1%) and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (25%).