Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

ExxonMobil to skirt the U.S. BTC

This is almost like treason. Many people have already died to get the BTC pipeline flowing as a means to contain, weaken and smother Russia. A significant amount of oil is pertinent to its success albeit the pipeline is poorly planned and considerably more expensive than oil from the Persian Gulf.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) that is slated to go on line next year otherwise known as the "deal of the century" was the catalyst for the U.S. backed Chechen War culminating in the Beslan school massacre and thus the best argument in favor of the agreement on an oil pipeline from Baku to Turkey as an alternative to a Russian pipeline, paradoxically confirming the Russian assumption that the United States benefits from Chechnya because it wants to bring the Caucasus under its influence.
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Now Caspian Sea oil is at a competitive disadvantage. It comes with a price tag that is four times higher than oil from the Persian Gulf, and getting it to the end users is difficult. Also, the oil has a high surphur content and is not of high quality.
http://thunder1.cudenver.edu/inst_intl_bus/gef/issues/98july/caspian.html

-Am

ExxonMobil signs deal to export Azeri oil

BAKU - ExxonMobil said on Wednesday it had signed a five-year contract for the export of 10 million tons of oil from the Caspian Sea by rail, skirting the costly 3.3-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) that is slated to go on line next year.

"Exxon and (Azerbaijan-based) AzPetrol signed an agreement in November to pump its first volumes of oil by rail from Baku to (the Georgian port) Batumi," ExxonMobil's spokeswoman in Azerbaijan, Leyla Rzakuliyeva, said.

The decision is likely to irritate Azeri authorities, which have already seen Russia's oil giant Lukoil drop out of the ambitious project because of its high cost.

ExxonMobil holds a stake in Azerbaijan's so-called "deal of the century", a massive oil contract signed in the early 1990s to develop Caspian Sea oil by the state oil company SOCAR, Statoil, LUKoil, ExxonMobil, Unocal, TPAO, Itochu Devon and Delta Hess.

But ExxonMobil will not pump its oil through the BTC pipeline, a separate project created to transport oil for participants in the deal, because of a disagreement over transport tariffs.

Exxon, however, is keeping its options open and negotiations with BTC continue.

"I'm for Exxon joining BTC, but there has been friction," said SOCAR president Natik Aliyev.

"This is a consequence of Exxon not having been able to come to a consensus with BTC concerning tariffs," Aliyev said, adding that he hoped negotiations would be successful.

When operational, the BTC pipeline will pump up to one million barrels of oil a day, but its increasing costs due in part to rocketing oil prices and delays on completion of the pipeline's Turkish section have made it less attractive to companies like Exxon and Lukoil.

Some of the delays have been caused by the theft of equipment and bad weather, Aliyev said, and "this has led to additional costs."

The project is being led by British oil giant BP, with backing from the US government.

The BTC consortium includes BP, which is the operator, Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, Eni, INPEX, Itochu, Statoil, TPAO and Unocal.

The pipeline runs 1,760 kilometres from Baku to a tanker terminal at Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

AFP


http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1758156-6078-0,00.html