It is expected to take five or six hours to extinguish the blaze, currently raging at a height of up to 50 meters. The blast occurred overnight and no casualties have been reported.
"The cause of the explosion, which occurred at a compressor station in the province of Erzincan, is not immediately known," the Turkish NTV channel reported. "Turkish authorities have ruled out a terrorist attack as a possible cause."
Westbound shipments were continuing using stockpiled oil.
Tamam Bayatly, a spokeswoman for BP Azerbaijan, which operates the Azeri part of the pipeline and the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil field, said oil supplies would resume in several hours. Oil extraction in Azerbaijan is continuing as scheduled.
Azerbaijan holds vast oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea, which it exports to neighboring Georgia, Turkey, and Europe through three pipelines - Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan via Georgia to Turkey, Baku-Novorossiisk, which links the Azeri capital with the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, and Baku-Supsa to Georgia.
A total of 1.2 million barrels of oil are shipped to Turkey via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline a day.
