CIECO, a subsidary of Itochu, an ExxonMobil official said on Monday.

"ExxonMobil became an owner of 2.5 percent stake in the BTC project in November 2017," Aygun Tanriverdiyeva, an ExxonMobil official in Baku, told Reuters.

"The company acquired the stake in the project from CIECO," she said without elaborating on details of the deal.

The BTC pipeline company operates the pipeline, which ships oil from Azerbaijan's major Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oilfields to Turkey via Georgia.