Nov 20. Transneft has pledged to file a lawsuit against a CPC shareholder – British BP, if the latter refuses to support expansion of the pipeline, Transneft’s press secretary Igor Demin said. CPC pumps some 33 mn tons of crude per year from the Kazakh oilfield Tengiz to the Russian port Novorossiysk. In early May, industry ministers of Russia and Kazakhstan finally clinched an agreement to expand the pipeline’s throughput capacity to 67 mn tons by 2012, which is necessary for Astana in order to pump incremental output from Tengiz. However, the shareholders have failed to coordinate the terms of expansion yet. Specifically, BP which holds a 6.6% stake via a number of JVs, favors external financing and is unwilling to invest in the expansion project, while other participants of the project have agreed to pay expansion using internal earnings of the consortium.