A senior US official raised alarms in February 2005 over Georgia's potential sale of its main gas pipeline to Russian energy giant Gazprom, cautioning that such a move could jeopardize Western energy links to the Caspian region. Stephen Mann, the US presidential advisor on Caspian affairs, told Georgian newspaper 24 Saati that Washington had long supported Georgian energy independence and firmly opposed any steps that would undermine it.
Mann warned that a Gazprom takeover of the pipeline could complicate the Shah-Deniz project, a planned gas link from Azerbaijan's Shah-Deniz field through Georgia to Türkiye. The comments followed Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's acknowledgment that Tbilisi was in discussions with Gazprom about the pipeline's sale. Mann urged Georgian authorities to proceed "with great caution and deliberation."
Georgia sits at the center of several major energy corridors. A BP- and Statoil-led consortium has approved a 3.2-billion-dollar gas pipeline running from Baku through Georgia to Erzurum in northern Türkiye. A separate 2.9-billion-dollar oil pipeline is under construction to carry up to one million barrels of crude daily from Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Georgia currently depends entirely on Russia for its gas supplies.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in February 2005, in its own words.