A fire on a Turkish section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline _ a major supplier of crude to Western markets _ disrupted the flow of oil, officials said Wednesday. Shipments were not affected.

The overnight blaze forced workers to shut down two valves along the pipeline as a precaution, halting the flow of all oil being sent to Ceyhan terminal from the east, said Murat Lecompte, a spokesman for pipeline shareholder British Petroleum.

Oil stockpiled at the terminal, however, was being used for westbound shipments, Lecompte said.

The fire, on a section of the pipeline in Refahiye in Erzincan province, was brought under control, but had not yet been fully extinguished, Lecompte said.

“The fire is at one of the valves along the pipeline. The valves before and after it were shut down, so the fire is isolated,” he said. The cause of the fire was under investigation.

It was not immediately clear when the flow of oil to Ceyhan would resume.

BP Azerbaijan spokeswoman Tamam Bayatli said pumping oil via the pipeline had been suspended because of the fire. But production at the Azeri-Chiraq Guneshli oil field, which feeds the pipeline, was continuing as usual.

Bayatli told the Associated Press that most of the oil produced was being stored at a terminal near the field and some was being pumped via alternate routes.

The Ceyhan terminal is at the southern tip of the pipeline on Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast.

The U.S.-backed 1,760-kilometer (1,100-mile) pipeline allows the West to tap oil from Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea fields, estimated to hold the world’s third-largest reserves, and bypass Russia and Iran. The project cost around US$4 billion (euro2.6 billion).

The first shipment for Western markets was done from Ceyhan port in mid-2006.

The pipeline can pump slightly more than 1 million barrels of crude oil per day, more than 1 percent of the world’s daily crude output.

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Associated Press writer Aida Sultanova in Baku, Azerbaijan, contributed to this report.