Officials Inaugurate U.S.-Backed Pipeline — Anyone remember this deal and it’s relationship to some other deal? Curiously I always thought that this pipeline was a BP project above all but the news sources are saying it’s a US project.
Officials Wednesday began filling the U.S.-backed $3.6 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline transporting Caspian crude to western markets. Leaders from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Turkey inaugurated the pipeline at the opening ceremony at an oil terminal near the Azeri capital of Baku.
The pipeline has a capacity to transport approximately 50 million tons annually. Currently standing at 95 percent completion, it will take 10 million barrels to fill the pipeline before pumping can begin.
It just says US backed. BP has been involved with many US projects. Why go across Turkey instead of across Georgia to the Black Sea?
The cheapest routes for Caspian oil to markets is via Iran or Russia. United States wants to end wants to end Iran’s and Russia’s influence on the oil and gas production in the region. There are serious doubts about the economic viability of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline but the United States has been pushing for it for obvious reasons. See the AsiaTimes article (Pipelineistan’s biggest game begins) for more information.
The BTC’s major shareholders are BP (30.1%) and the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR (25%), followed by Unocal (US, 8.9%), Statoil (Norway, 8.71%), Turkish Petroleum (6.53%), ENI (Italy, 5%), TotalFinaElf (France, 5%), Itochu (Japan, 3.4%), ConocoPhillips (US, 2.5%), Inpex (Japan, 2.5%) and Delta Hess (a joint venture of Saudi Delta Oil with American Amerada, 2.36%).
“Why go across Turkey instead of across Georgia to the Black Sea?”
Don’t know, but maybe easier access directly from the Med, instead of having to navigate into/out of Black Sea?
The minute they get pissed off at the U.S. or want more subsidies, that pipeline will be shut down or incapicitated.