To my mind the 1000-mile Baku-Ceyhan line is being justly criticized by most businessmen and investors for putting politics before economics. It’s true that America wants to isolate Iran, so Washington is trying to encourage other countries to have the export routes of their oil and gas resources East-West. But many analysts would agree that the KTK pipeline and the Southern route running through Iran are the most cheap alternative ways to get the oil to the international market… and the safest ones. According to the latest information Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey have entered into a counter terrorist alliance to protect their oil and gas infrastructures. The problem is that the three countries have the same ailment called separatism and fear terrorist attacks on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline from inside of the country. The most expensive and economically unsound project may turn out to be the most risky one.

Separatism is not an ailment, it's people who, having been pushed around too long, have decided to opt for their self-determination rights.

James Burton  (no login) wrote us
December 6 2001 at 3:16 AM
from IP address 195.12.102.84
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They say, when it starts wrong, it goes wrong to the very end. Baku-Ceyhan project has been a failure from the very beginning. The construction of the pipeline hasn’t even begun, and British Petroleum (BP), the operator of the project already faced so many difficulties - starting with an unfavorable relief of the area the pipeline is going to run through to high expenditures for its construction, which would hardly pay. And now another obstacle - the KTK pipeline that will draw away some of the Kazakh oil meant for the Baku-Ceyhan. Anyhow BP and Baku are very optimistic on the project. They are quite sure that there will be enough Kazakh oil for the Baku-Ceyhan project too. By the way they think this route has some advantages over the KTK pipe: Baku-Ceyhan is closer to the European markets and thus to European consumers. There is only one question left against the background of sinking oil prices: it’s not lucrative to construct an expensive pipe to transfer cheap oil. It is likely that the construction of Baku-Ceyhan will be jammed for considerable time. And it would surely scare investors away.