Azerbaijan oil "rebirth" seen as Caspian pipeline inaugurated

BAKU - Dignitaries inaugurated Wednesday a major US-backed pipeline that will bring oil from sources in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia, long under Moscow's sway, directly to Western markets, reshaping the region's geopolitical landscape in the process.
Ceremonies attended by presidents and top international officials, including US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, to launch the four-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline were held at an oil terminal south of the Azerbaijan capital.
In a statement, the head of the Azerbaijan division of British oil major BP, David Woodward, said the opening of the pipeline marked the former Soviet republic's "rebirth as an important country for the (oil) industry, just as it was more than a century ago."
The 1,770-kilometer-long (1,094-mile-) pipeline will transform the Caucasus and Turkey into an energy bridge between the Caspian and the rest of the world and has shifted geostrategic alliances in the Caucasus region and Central Asia.
But the presence of senior officials from the United States and other countries at Wednesday's ceremonies was tainted by a controversy as Azeri authorities continued to hold opposition members detained in connection with the pipeline's opening.
Police badly beat and arrested scores of people attending a peaceful rally last Saturday as part of a wider opposition crackdown. Authorities justified their actions on grounds that the rally was held too close to the pipeline opening ceremonies, a claim questioned by Western officials.
Wednesday's ceremonies were attended by the presidents of the three countries that the pipeline traverses: Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
Baku was the sight of some of the first industrially developed oil fields in the world at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Anglo-American oil giant BP holds a leading 30 percent stake in the consortium running the pipeline. Other consortium members include Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Inpex, Itochu, Statoil, Total, TPAO and Unocal.
SOCAR president Natik Aliyev called the pipeline, which is expected to become a major competitor to traditional export routes for Caspian oil that pass through Russia, the "realization" of a national dream on Wednesday.
He said it "bridged the nations of the region."
The Caspian region produces a light crude of high quality but has suffered from its distance from the world's major consumers -- North America, Europe, China and Japan.
The pipeline is to ship one million barrels of Caspian oil, roughly one percent of global oil production, to Turkey's Mediterranean coast daily once it is fully up and running by the end of the year.

05/25/2005 07:24 GMT