Top Russian Official Opposes U.S. Security for Baku-Ceyhan Oil Link

Europe - Russia
25 May 2005 - The Mos News

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The construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline is growing from a purely economic into a political problem, Mikhail Margelov, head of the international affairs committee in Russia?s upper house of parliament, told the Interfax news agency.

"This pipeline is virtually golden, and someone certainly must protect it. Russia's attitude to proposals made by some politicians that this task should actually be delegated to the United States, is firmly negative. Russia will always oppose the presence of any foreign military contingents within the boundaries of the CIS," Margelov said.

"First and foremost, it is a question of [Russia's] national security and the expediency of a foreign military presence in the region, which would look especially strange against the background of the pullout of Russian bases from Georgia," he said.

Margelov wondered why Russia has not been invited to help protect the pipeline. "Russia has huge experience of [military] presence in the region. We all are partners in the anti-terrorist coalition, and it makes attempts to use the new pipeline as a pretext for enhancing foreign military presence in the region doubly outrageous," he said.

As for the pipeline itself, Russia can only congratulate all the participants of the project on reaching the final stage and the forthcoming completion of the very complex and important construction work, Margelov said.

The State Duma's Konstantin Kosachyov told the agency that the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline was prompted by political rather than economic motives.

"It is absolutely obvious that this project was born for political rather than economic reasons in order to create a stable alternative for transferring Caspian energy resources to the West bypassing Russia and some other states, such as Iran," Kosachyov, who is the head of the State Duma international affairs committee, told Interfax.

The new pipeline will pump over 1 million barrels per day of Azeri and possibly Kazakh crude later this decade to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, bypassing regional monopolist Russia and the crowded Black Sea Bosphorus straits, the Reuters news agency reported.

"We view this as a significant step forward in the energy security of that region," U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday before leaving for Baku to attend the pipeline opening ceremony on Wednesday. "This is a contribution towards an increased supply of oil in the world ... so we think it's a very good thing."

The $4-billion pipeline, masterminded over 10 years ago with the help of the United States, will pump oil from the land-locked Caspian, which experts say contains more energy riches than the North Sea. Azerbaijan alone claims it will be able to boost production to over 1 million bpd from the current 350,000 bpd by the next decade, mainly due to production from the BP-led offshore group.

Russia has long opposed the U.S.-backed pipeline, which was delayed for several years. Work on it speeded up a few years ago after BP found more oil in Azerbaijan and crude prices started to recover from their record low in the late 1990s.

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