Free Republic

The World Bank plans to recommend support for a $4bn (£2.4bn) pipeline through central Asia, according to a leaked internal report. Campaign groups reacted with fury to news that the bank's commercial arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), believes that its 173 country members should agree a $300m loan. BTC, a consortium led by the British oil giant BP, is building a 1,090-mile pipeline from the Caspian through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean. But the project, which aims to allow the West to tap into vast oil reserves without going through the Middle East, has encountered objections from...

LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The World Bank (news - web sites) is approaching approval for a strategic crude pipeline linking Caspian oilfields to the world market, with a final decision due later this month, a top official told Reuters on Friday. The Bank is holding its final discussions on funding the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and initial indications are the project meets the group's stringent environmental and transparency standards, Rashad Kaldany, head of energy for the bank and its investment arm International Finance Corp (IFC.UL) said in an interview. A positive World Bank verdict would unlock funds from other multilateral...

Kazakhstan Waiting to be richJun 12th 2003 | ALMATY From The Economist print editionMystery of the oil billionsJUST as in Soviet times, the people of Kazakhstan have long been promised a better life. Oil, they have been repeatedly told over the 12 years since independence, will make a difference. During the 1990s, oil reserves in the Caspian Sea basin were thought to be enormous, matching those of the Gulf states. Although those estimates turned out to be exaggerated, the true size of the reserves is still substantial. Over the past few years, Kazakhstan has doubled its oil production, to almost 1m...

April 27, 2003 In Case You Missed This Mega-Deal By VLADIMIR SOCOR While Europe was sleeping-and America fought in Iraq-the Kremlin has taken a major step toward monopolizing the transit of Caspian energy resources, thus adding to Europe´s dependence on energy supplies from Russia (and, at the same time, reducing hopes for Afghanistan´s future development). That step would merge Turkmenistan´s immense deposits of natural gas with those of Russia, into one export pool under Russian control. Turkmenistan holds the world´s third-largest proven reserves of gas (after Russia and Iran), but the Turkmen deposits are not fully explored or even prospected....

LONDON - A group of western oil companies today blocked two Chinese rivals from taking a stake in a Kazakhstan project, one of the world's largest new oil and gas developments. Confirmation of the move, widely reported over the past two weeks, denies energy-hungry China a key foothold in the global hydrocarbons industry by keeping the Chinese firms, CNOOC and Sinopec, from buying eight percent stakes that British partner BG agreed to sell to them. "Five of six remaining partners in the Republic of Kazakhstan's North Caspian Sea Production Sharing Agreement (NCPSA) have exercised their pre-emptive rights in the sale,"...

Western oil companies on Friday moved to block two of China's biggest oil companies from one of the world's largest oil and gas projects, in a high-stakes game that risks antagonising the Chinese authorities. After all-night meetings, executives from several large oil groups are understood to have decided to prevent CNOOC, China's second biggest oil company, from buying a $615m stake from BG in the North Caspian Sea Production Sharing Agreement. An announcement is expected on Monday. Shell's surprise decision, first reported in the Financial Times on Wednesday, is believed to have been backed by four of its five partners...

Fashion designers from New York to Milan have filled the runways in recent weeks with all the latest Spring looks. Hemlines are up, heel heights are down and pink is all the rage. But regardless of what you think of this season's haute couture you should be made aware of a trend that's catching on... it could make you think twice before buying new clothes. Tiny specks capable of tracking virtually every single item are now being imbedded by manufacturers. This Orwellian technology, called RFID (radio frequency ID) will now be used by Italian clothing designer Benetton in the form...

THESSALONIKI, Greece, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Greece and Turkey signed an agreement on Sunday to build a pipeline transporting natural gas between the two countries in a project which will ultimately channel the energy source from the Caspian Sea region to the rest of Europe. Greek Development Minister Akis Tzohatzopoulos and Turkish energy minister Mehmet-Hilmi Guler sealed the agreement after the two neighbours had signed a memorandum of understanding on it last year. "This deal will help Greece meet its energy needs and ensure that we act as a transit point for European countries," Tzohatzopoulos told reporters. The $250 million...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Photo: AFP SANGACHAL, Azerbaijan (AFP) - The inaugural section of an oil pipeline that will pump crude from the Caspian Sea to Turkey's Mediterranean coast was laid in Azerbaijan, marking the start of construction on the US-backed project.The 2.95-billion-dollar (3.05-billion-euro) pipeline heralds a US-backed challenge to Russia's stranglehold on export routes from the oil-rich Caspian.In a ceremony near Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, heads of state from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey -- Heidar Aliyev, Eduard Shevardnadze and Ahmet Necdet Sezer -- watched as a length of steel pipe was lowered into the ground."The...

TURKEY’S CASPIAN ENERGY QUANDARY The Turkish agenda has been understandably dominated in recent months by the grave economic crisis and Turkey’s possible role in the United States-led drive for a regime change in Iraq, as well as by the domestic political upheavals that have led to a decision on early elections in November. Consequently, there has been little serious discussion of Turkish energy problems. In fact, until recently, the prevailing mood in Ankara on energy policy was unwaveringly upbeat. Political leaders and officials pointed to Turkey’s vibrant economy and projected energy needs as they focused on the important role the...

Russia may deploy new forces in Caspian By Bojan Soc From the International Desk Published 8/10/2002 4:17 PM MOSCOW, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Russia and some of its Caspian neighbors may create a new military contingent that will be stationed in the region to keep in check security threats, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters Saturday. The minister added that Kazakh troops would most likely join their Russian counterparts in the multi-national force with the door open to all other parties wishing to join. No details were available on the potential number of troops that could be deployed under...

Moscow, Aug. 8. (DPA): Russia today began its largest ever military exercises in the Caspian, deploying 10,000 men and 60 warships to the inland sea. The manoeuvres were "to enable Russia's defence against real threats", Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said in the town of Astrakhan. Russia shares the Caspian with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Iran, and has for years disputed ownership of the vast gas and oil reserves there. The eight-day exercise will rehearse operations against drug running, terrorism and poaching in the sea, where stocks of the caviar-producing sturgeon fish have been depleted to the point of extinction. Azerbaijani...

The Caspian: As Negotiations Fail, Iran Hints at Military Action 2 July 2002 Summary Slowly but surely Iran is finding itself squeezed out of any share of the oil and gas revenues from the Caspian Sea. Tehran is responding with hints of military threats, which for now appear to be just rhetoric but may later turn into violence. Analysis The Iranian government is becoming increasingly desperate to claim a share of oil deposits in the resource-rich Caspian Sea. Last week Iranian President Mohammad Khatami resorted to veiled threats when he railed against the foreign presence in the Caspian region. The...

MOSCOW - Over growing protests from Iran, Russia has decided to draw a fine line in the Caspian Sea to enable oil companies to drill for oil but avoid the legal problems of setting up national sectors in the sea. Russian policy is also aiming to settle the status of the northern Caspian oilfields without antagonizing Iran by pressuring for a similar deal in the southern sector of the sea. An agreement signed last week in Moscow by President Vladimir Putin and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan "solves the problem of the seabed oil deposits which were subject to disputes",...

Tehran, May 7, IRNA -- Minister of Defense Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani here Tuesday said the upcoming Russian maneuver in the Caspian Sea is not linked with the recent summit of leaders of littoral states in Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan. Speaking on the sidelines of the Exhibition of Smart Defense Systems, Shamkhani said the war games could be a reaction to the presence of trans-regional forces in the sea. He stressed that the Russian military exercises could also be in response to certain provocative remarks regarding the presence of these troops. Shamkhani described the Caspian Sea as the sea of peace and...

The coming Caspian oil boom could break the stranglehold of Persian Gulf countries, and the Saudi-dominated cartel OPEC, on the world's petroleum supplies. But it threatens to make Russia the master of world oil markets. In US’s view, there is a problem: Russia controls the only means of transporting Caspian oil to the world—-the Transneft pipeline network—worth billions of dollars in transit fees. "No one in Washington is ready to accept that Moscow will control the world's oil tap", says Sergei Kazyannov of the Institute of National Security Studies. US oil majors have championed two alternate routes, but until recently...