AI
U.S. Against Kazakhstan-Iran Oil Pipeline Plan: official
The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan design is a masterpiece of power politics, although it makes no sense, as the most cost-effective route would be via Iran.
Washington has branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and has banned U.S. companies from doing business with Iran's regime, however, Cheney's Halliburton is bidding for Iranian gas projects even though American companies are prohibited from involvement in Iranian economic activities.
-Am
U.S. Against Kazakhstan-Iran Oil Pipeline Plan: official
BAKU (AFP) -- A top U.S. diplomat Tuesday underlined Washington's opposition to a French-backed plan which, if realized, would see a pipeline built from Kazakhstan to Iran to export the massive oil reserves underneath the Caspian Sea.
"The U.S. is firmly opposed to this pipeline, for reasons both of law and policy," Steven Mann, the U.S. special envoy on Caspian basin energy issues, told reporters.
"Commercially speaking, I think there are better alternatives," added Mann, who was speaking on the sidelines of the annual Caspian Oil and Gas conference in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku.
Kazakhstan's government, together with French oil major Total, has been studying the feasibility of building a pipeline to ship crude from Kazakhstan to Iran, and from there to tanker terminals on the Persian Gulf.
However, the idea has angered Washington. It has branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and has banned U.S. companies from doing business with Iran's regime.
The Caspian Sea -- and especially Kazakhstan's sector -- is home to some of the world's largest untapped oil reserves. It is estimated that there are up to 33 billion barrels of crude under the seabed, which is twice the size of the reserves in the North Sea.
The landlocked Caspian has attracted the attention of investors who want to diversify oil supplies away from the Middle East, which, they say, is vulnerable to political instability.
Washington has backed the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which will export Caspian oil west across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea. That project is due to be completed by the middle of next year.
However, some in the oil industry say the southern route, through Iran, is shorter and commercially more attractive
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=6/2/2004&Cat=9&Num=020
Reference:
The BTC bomb
The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, BTC, is being planned and built by the BTC Pipeline Company (BTC Co), a huge consortium led and operated by British oil giant British Petroleum, BP. The major shareholders are BP (30.1 percent) and Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR ( 25 percent). The others are Unocal (US. Union Oil compay of California, 8.9 percent), Statoil (Norway, 8.71 percent), Turkish Petroleum (6.53 percent), ENI (Italy, 5 percent), TotalFinaElf (France, 5 percent), Itochu (Japan, 3.4 percent), ConocoPhillips (US, 2.5 percent), Inpex (Japan, 2.5 percent) and Delta Hess (a joint venture of Saudi Delta Oil with American Amerada, 2.36 percent). A related South Caucasus gas pipeline (which would run alongside the BTC), three oilfields (Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) and the Shah Deniz gasfield which would feed the pipelines are also being planned by the same consortium.
The three countries through which the 1,767 kilometer pipeline will pass - Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey - are all desperate to finish the BTC on time. Turkey owes a fortune to the International Monetary Fund. Georgia survives thanks to American handouts. Azerbaijan courted international lenders by setting up a state oil fund to use oil revenues to the benefit of future generations. Officially, the BTC will cost $2.95 billion, 30 percent financed by the consortium and 70 percent borrowed. It has already spiraled upwards to $3.7 billion, and counting.
A British-based BTC campaign is extremely concerned with the high stakes game around BTC. It has stressed how BP extracted an international treaty to back its investment. BTC is subject to an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey - "but drafted by BP's lawyers", as well as an individual Host Government Agreement (HGA) between each of the three governments and the BP-led consortium: "These agreements have largely exempted BP and its partners from any laws in the three countries - present or future - which conflict with the company's project plans. The agreements allow BP to demand compensation from the governments should any law (including environmental, social or human rights law) make the pipeline less profitable." The agreements have for these reasons been described by non-governmental organizations as "colonialist".
BTC's design is a masterpiece of power politics, although it makes no sense, as the most cost-effective route would be via Iran. BTC slices Azerbaijan in half from east to west, then slices Georgia in half almost from east to west before taking a dip south, bypassing probably secessionist Ajaria and slicing Anatolia diagonally from the northeast towards the south. The BTC campaign points out that "in the case of Turkey, the country would be effectively divided into three: the area where Turkish law applies; the Kurdish areas under official or de facto military rule; and a strip running the entire length of the country from north to south, where BP is the effective government". These issues obviously do not concern cheerful British BP employees downing their pints at the Britannia pub at the Baku Hyatt.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the private sector arm of the World Bank - is the key for financing BTC. It is now fully on board. But opposition to BTC is also fully on board - from Kurdish guerrillas in northeast Turkey to Georgia's Ministry of Environmental Protection. Ankara has used emergency powers to expropriate peasant land without decent compensation. BTC may contain many potential breaches of international law. And workers in Georgia are even complaining that in the past few months their paychecks have been sliced. During winter the salary of workers in Georgia will be raised by only $2. About 3,000 Georgians and 500 foreigners work on the BTC's Georgian stretch.
Executives of SOCAR, the Azeri state oil company, in Baku say that an altered pipeline route through Georgia would mean a new design, an extra 15-month delay and costs spiraling to as much as $5 billion. It doesn't matter that Georgian scientists have warned that excavations for the pipeline construction could result in the spread of acute infectious diseases in Georgia. Some corporate assurances are frankly Kafkaesque: among other justifications, BP in Baku says that even in the case of an oil leakage in the Borjomi area, there will be no damage to the source of the famous local mineral water because the pipeline will be 15 kilometers away.
With Azerbaijan - and also Kazakhstan - becoming important new energy suppliers for the US, they are expected to be under heavy scrutiny. A report by George Soros' Open Society Institute has called for "accountability, transparency, and public oversight in the oil and natural gas industries of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan". The report's opening comments by Joseph Siglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and former World Bank stalwart, may be just common sense: "There is no issue of greater importance than ensuring the long-run prosperity and stability of resource-rich countries by developing ways to use these resources and the wealth they generate well." These words may not necessarily make corporate sense.
#msg-2004854
The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan design is a masterpiece of power politics, although it makes no sense, as the most cost-effective route would be via Iran.
Washington has branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and has banned U.S. companies from doing business with Iran's regime, however, Cheney's Halliburton is bidding for Iranian gas projects even though American companies are prohibited from involvement in Iranian economic activities.
-Am
U.S. Against Kazakhstan-Iran Oil Pipeline Plan: official
BAKU (AFP) -- A top U.S. diplomat Tuesday underlined Washington's opposition to a French-backed plan which, if realized, would see a pipeline built from Kazakhstan to Iran to export the massive oil reserves underneath the Caspian Sea.
"The U.S. is firmly opposed to this pipeline, for reasons both of law and policy," Steven Mann, the U.S. special envoy on Caspian basin energy issues, told reporters.
"Commercially speaking, I think there are better alternatives," added Mann, who was speaking on the sidelines of the annual Caspian Oil and Gas conference in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku.
Kazakhstan's government, together with French oil major Total, has been studying the feasibility of building a pipeline to ship crude from Kazakhstan to Iran, and from there to tanker terminals on the Persian Gulf.
However, the idea has angered Washington. It has branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and has banned U.S. companies from doing business with Iran's regime.
The Caspian Sea -- and especially Kazakhstan's sector -- is home to some of the world's largest untapped oil reserves. It is estimated that there are up to 33 billion barrels of crude under the seabed, which is twice the size of the reserves in the North Sea.
The landlocked Caspian has attracted the attention of investors who want to diversify oil supplies away from the Middle East, which, they say, is vulnerable to political instability.
Washington has backed the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which will export Caspian oil west across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea. That project is due to be completed by the middle of next year.
However, some in the oil industry say the southern route, through Iran, is shorter and commercially more attractive
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=6/2/2004&Cat=9&Num=020
Reference:
The BTC bomb
The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, BTC, is being planned and built by the BTC Pipeline Company (BTC Co), a huge consortium led and operated by British oil giant British Petroleum, BP. The major shareholders are BP (30.1 percent) and Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR ( 25 percent). The others are Unocal (US. Union Oil compay of California, 8.9 percent), Statoil (Norway, 8.71 percent), Turkish Petroleum (6.53 percent), ENI (Italy, 5 percent), TotalFinaElf (France, 5 percent), Itochu (Japan, 3.4 percent), ConocoPhillips (US, 2.5 percent), Inpex (Japan, 2.5 percent) and Delta Hess (a joint venture of Saudi Delta Oil with American Amerada, 2.36 percent). A related South Caucasus gas pipeline (which would run alongside the BTC), three oilfields (Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) and the Shah Deniz gasfield which would feed the pipelines are also being planned by the same consortium.
The three countries through which the 1,767 kilometer pipeline will pass - Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey - are all desperate to finish the BTC on time. Turkey owes a fortune to the International Monetary Fund. Georgia survives thanks to American handouts. Azerbaijan courted international lenders by setting up a state oil fund to use oil revenues to the benefit of future generations. Officially, the BTC will cost $2.95 billion, 30 percent financed by the consortium and 70 percent borrowed. It has already spiraled upwards to $3.7 billion, and counting.
A British-based BTC campaign is extremely concerned with the high stakes game around BTC. It has stressed how BP extracted an international treaty to back its investment. BTC is subject to an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey - "but drafted by BP's lawyers", as well as an individual Host Government Agreement (HGA) between each of the three governments and the BP-led consortium: "These agreements have largely exempted BP and its partners from any laws in the three countries - present or future - which conflict with the company's project plans. The agreements allow BP to demand compensation from the governments should any law (including environmental, social or human rights law) make the pipeline less profitable." The agreements have for these reasons been described by non-governmental organizations as "colonialist".
BTC's design is a masterpiece of power politics, although it makes no sense, as the most cost-effective route would be via Iran. BTC slices Azerbaijan in half from east to west, then slices Georgia in half almost from east to west before taking a dip south, bypassing probably secessionist Ajaria and slicing Anatolia diagonally from the northeast towards the south. The BTC campaign points out that "in the case of Turkey, the country would be effectively divided into three: the area where Turkish law applies; the Kurdish areas under official or de facto military rule; and a strip running the entire length of the country from north to south, where BP is the effective government". These issues obviously do not concern cheerful British BP employees downing their pints at the Britannia pub at the Baku Hyatt.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the private sector arm of the World Bank - is the key for financing BTC. It is now fully on board. But opposition to BTC is also fully on board - from Kurdish guerrillas in northeast Turkey to Georgia's Ministry of Environmental Protection. Ankara has used emergency powers to expropriate peasant land without decent compensation. BTC may contain many potential breaches of international law. And workers in Georgia are even complaining that in the past few months their paychecks have been sliced. During winter the salary of workers in Georgia will be raised by only $2. About 3,000 Georgians and 500 foreigners work on the BTC's Georgian stretch.
Executives of SOCAR, the Azeri state oil company, in Baku say that an altered pipeline route through Georgia would mean a new design, an extra 15-month delay and costs spiraling to as much as $5 billion. It doesn't matter that Georgian scientists have warned that excavations for the pipeline construction could result in the spread of acute infectious diseases in Georgia. Some corporate assurances are frankly Kafkaesque: among other justifications, BP in Baku says that even in the case of an oil leakage in the Borjomi area, there will be no damage to the source of the famous local mineral water because the pipeline will be 15 kilometers away.
With Azerbaijan - and also Kazakhstan - becoming important new energy suppliers for the US, they are expected to be under heavy scrutiny. A report by George Soros' Open Society Institute has called for "accountability, transparency, and public oversight in the oil and natural gas industries of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan". The report's opening comments by Joseph Siglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and former World Bank stalwart, may be just common sense: "There is no issue of greater importance than ensuring the long-run prosperity and stability of resource-rich countries by developing ways to use these resources and the wealth they generate well." These words may not necessarily make corporate sense.
#msg-2004854
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