Caspian oil will flow past Turkey
The Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline is unlikely to be built
This week, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Tofik Zulfugarov visited Tbilisi. He discussed how the earthquake in Turkey would affect the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The implementation of this ambitious project is in jeopardy. True, this is even beneficial for Georgia.

As a Kommersant source in the Georgian Foreign Ministry reported, in mid-September the presidents of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan were supposed to meet in Istanbul and sign an agreement on the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline (a Turkish port on the Mediterranean coast), capable of transporting “big” Azerbaijani oil to the west. The President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, also showed interest in this project, since it is possible to lay a branch along the bottom of the Caspian Sea connecting Kazakh fields with the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
The earthquake in Turkey confused all the cards and called into question the possibility of building this oil pipeline. According to experts, Turkey is unlikely to be able to find the $2.5 billion needed for construction, since the direct damage from the earthquake alone amounted to $5 billion. At the same time, trust in Turkish construction companies was greatly shaken (it was assumed that the Turks would build the oil pipeline).
At the same time, Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijan International Operating Consortium (AIOC) cannot delay the start of construction, since they have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the project. Thus, Tbilisi may be the winner, since the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline (Black Sea port in Georgia) with a throughput capacity of 10 million tons per year has already been built. Now “small” oil from Azerbaijan flows through it. A Kommersant source in the Georgian Foreign Ministry does not exclude the possibility of a bilateral agreement between Georgia and Azerbaijan on the construction of a large oil pipeline from the Caspian coast to the Supsa terminals on the Georgian coast.
There is, however, the Baku-Novorossiysk option, but recent events in Dagestan are unlikely to encourage international oil companies to seriously consider it.
If an agreement is reached between Baku and Tbilisi, the new oil pipeline should have a throughput capacity at least ten times greater than that of the one already built. Last year, when the route for transporting “big” Azerbaijani oil was being determined, Eduard Shevardnadze proposed the Georgian route as the most economically profitable and safe. However, for geopolitical reasons, Washington insisted on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan option, with the condition that Turkey itself would find sources of financing. But now Ankara has no time for ambitious projects.

GEORGE Kommersant-Dvali, Tbilisi

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 153 dated 08.26.1999, p. 4

Authors:

Georgy Dvali