Iranian President has criticized US backing of the Baku-T oil pipeline

Caspian challenge
By Siavosh Ghazi NEKA, IRAN
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has criticized US backing of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, a project to export crude from the landlocked Caspian Sea, arguing that Iran will provide supplies more cheaply.

Speaking at the official opening of an oil terminal on April 30, Khatami repeated claims that there was no need for the multi-billion-dollar project, which will bypass both Iran and Russia. He implied that Washington, keen to develop the Caspian as an alternative to the Middle East as a source of energy supplies, wanted to put the two countries at a disadvantage.

“The Iranian route to transport Caspian oil is the shortest and the least expensive,” he told reporters. “The United States, with its restrictive policy, is posing problems to other countries,” he said.

The BTC pipeline, due to start operating in the first quarter of 2005, will pump up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from near Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, through Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

It is being built by a consortium of oil majors, led by BP, at a cost of around $3 billion.

More than half of the work has already been completed and the BTC consortium says the pipeline is on schedule.

Russia is also cool toward the pipeline. It favors exporting oil from the Caspian Sea – home of some of the world’s biggest untapped hydrocarbon reserves – across its own territory.

In a related development, Iran inaugurated a swap agreement with several Caspian oil producers on April 29 – a scheme originally launched several months ago....cont'd

http://metimes.com/2K4/issue2004-19/methaus.htm