Free Republic

A major fire-damaged oil pipeline carrying crude from Azerbaijan to Turkey has returned to normal operations, BP's spokesperson in Baku said on Monday. The first cargo would be lifted on Tuesday. "We ramped up the flow over the weekend, and we're still ramping now but effectively we're back to normal operations," said Tamam Bayatlı, the spokesperson of BP, which operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Bayatli also confirmed that the Baku-Supsa pipeline remained closed as a "precaution" given the security situation in Georgia but that the situation was under constant assessment and the pipeline could be reopened as soon as it...

For more than a year, much of the news from the oil industry hasn’t exactly been positive. The price for a barrel of oil reached record highs and seemingly a daily basis, and the quarterly profit statements by the major oil companies hit records as well. With U.S. drivers paying previously unheard-of prices to fill up their tanks, the oil industry was the enemy. This was true here in Southeast Texas, even though oil is a crucial element of the region’s economy. Oil and pump prices have eased recently, and that’s not the only reason the blood pressure of area...

President Bush urged Moscow to abandon two Soviet-era military bases in Georgia as he met on Wednesday with the newly elected leader of the strategically placed Caucasus state. Sitting with President Mikhail Saakashvili in the Oval Office, Bush told reporters he would help build good relations between Georgia and Russia. He said Russia should honor a promise to remove the bases, which it made during the 1999 Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "The Istanbul commitment made it very clear that Russia would leave those bases," Bush said after a closed-door meeting with Saakashvili, whose...

LONDON (Reuters) - BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday exports of Azeri oil from Turkey should resume next week after repairs to the $4 billion (2.1 billion pounds) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline damaged by a fire two weeks ago. The line can pump up to 1 million barrels per day of oil, equal to more than 1 percent of world supply, from fields in the Azeri part of the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan in Turkey. Its closure had supported world oil prices, which fell initially on news that it was reopening. "We've taken the decision to start dynamic integrity...

Prompted by refinery expansions, Houston partnership is planning a $2 billion terminal 36 miles off the coast of Freeport ... Enterprise Products Partners and TEPPCO Partners, both affiliated with Houston billionaire Dan Duncan, and the German company Oiltanking Holdings Americas, call the project the Texas Offshore Port System — TOPS. It would include two floating connections for supertankers to unload crude, 160-miles of pipelines to bring the oil onshore and along the coast to refineries in Houston, Port Arthur and Beaumont, as well as new onshore storage for more than 5 million barrels of crude. ... When it begins operations,...

WASHINGTON - It was surely not lost on Russia's bully in chief, Vladimir Putin, that the oil giant BP decided to shut down the pipeline that runs through parts of Georgia controlled by Russian troops. Indeed, that was one of the aims of the cross-border incursion. Putin understands better than anyone that oil and natural gas are the source of Russia's resurgence as a military and economic power and his own control over the Russian government and key sectors of its economy. It is oil and gas that provide the money to maintain Russia's powerful military, along with a vast...

The crisis in Georgia has focused minds on the supply of oil to western Europe via lines that cross - and avoid - Russia. Russell Hotten considers the prospects for the embattled democracy The sight of bombed-out buildings and Russian tanks descending on villages in Georgia has underlined that for all its investment potential, this vast stretch of the globe remains a powder keg. Moscow has not just sent a message to several former Soviet states not to step out of line, it has sent a signal to Europe about the fragility and security of its economic interests. Television pictures...

In both geopolitical and economic terms, the United States appears a loser in the Russia-Georgia conflict. If the pipeline crossing Georgia, bringing approximately a million barrels of Caspian oil a day to the West, remains shut down for much longer, it could result in higher oil prices. "We could see $4 a gallon gasoline again," warns Edward Yardeni, an American consulting economist. The 1,100-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline provides only about 1 percent of the global demand for oil. But, as Prof. Michael Klare of Amherst College notes: "There's not a lot of spare [crude oil] capacity" in the world. In...

OTTAWA and TORONTO -- In early 2002, some 200 U.S. Special Forces soldiers landed in the former Soviet republic of Georgia to train the Georgian army in anti-terrorism techniques, including how to protect a planned oil pipeline from secessionist or anti-Western saboteurs. With strong encouragement from Washington, Georgia was finalizing a deal with its neighbours, Azerbaijan and Turkey, and Britain's BP PLC to build a $3.9-billion (U.S.) pipeline from the oil-rich Caspian region to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea. The 1,768-kilometre, somewhat-circuitous route bypassed major U.S. rivals in the region, Russia and Iran, as well as...

A Turkish energy ministry official confirmed that the BTC pipeline blast was a terrorist act. But what’s more, Russia’s international politics advisor to the Russian Duma declared the pipeline “dead” and that it would never operate again. An adviser to the Russian parliament also claimed the closed pipeline would not be opened again and declared the line is “dead”. “The world and countries in the region have seen that not NATO, but Russia is the only one who could secure the energy routes,” Alexander Dugin, international politics advisor to the Russia’s Duma, told Turkish Cumhuriyet daily. “In this context, regarding...

Energy: As congressional Democrats dither on a vote for oil drilling, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has pushed through a gas pipeline project to bring new supply and price relief to the lower 48. On Aug. 1, the same day the call for a vote on drilling began on the House floor, the Alaska state Senate approved a package of measures to license a new natural gas pipeline. House Bill 3001 lets Palin award the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act license to TransCanada Alaska, a pipeline builder that cast a winning bid of five.

Energy: As congressional Democrats dither on a vote for oil drilling, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has pushed through a gas pipeline project to bring new supply and price relief to the lower 48.On Aug. 1, the same day the call for a vote on drilling began on the House floor, the Alaska state Senate approved a package of measures to license a new natural gas pipeline. House Bill 3001 lets Palin award the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act license to TransCanada Alaska, a pipeline builder that cast a winning bid of five. The legislature had been trying for 30 years to...

Georgia Conflict - Open Thread #4 Posted by Gail the Actuary on August 15, 2008 - 10:08am Topic: Policy/PoliticsTags: georgia, pipelines, russia [list all tags] Russia has won in the conflict in Georgia, and we are in the process of sorting out what happens next. Various ones have written what they see happening. GEORGIA-RUSSIA CONFLICT SHOWS EU'S ENERGY VULNERABILITY But this week's offensive, during which British Petroleum shut down an oil pipeline and temporarily stopped pumping gas through Georgia, has called into question plans for a Eurasian corridor free from Russian interference. "The Caspian region is wondering what this...

Geopolitics: Russia's aggression is not only about toppling a pro-Western democracy and potential NATO member. It's about the only pipeline bringing Caspian Sea oil to the West not controlled by Moscow or Iran.Georgia is only the latest instance of Russia's plans to reassemble the "evil empire" and neuter NATO expansion, using energy as both a weapon and a means of financing its rapid military expansion. Russia has doubled its military in the past five years, thanks in large part to the "windfall profits" it has reaped from skyrocketing energy prices. One of the Russian targets in Georgia is a pipeline...

In late 2006, China for the first time in its history became a net coal importer. This changed the dyanmics of the world's energy market. Korea and Japan, previously importers of Chinese coal, were sent scrambling for alternative sources of energy. What they found in the winter of 2007 was LNG for $18-$20/BTU. China too was a willing buyer. The coal scramble was also felt in Europe. Australian coal was bottlenecked and/or kept in the Asian region. Power outages in South African coal mines made the situation worse for Europeans as they lost out on significant supply. What followed was...

What we've been reminded once again is that Vladimir Putin is perfectly willing to sacrifice the rule of law and the good opinion of others to protect the Russian empire and the energy monopoly that sustains it. The techniques he used to bring Georgia to heel, while more lethal and destructive, have the same thuggish quality as the techniques Putin uses to silence domestic opposition and to expropriate the energy assets of Yukos, Shell and BP.

LONDON (AFP) — British energy giant BP said Tuesday that it has closed two more oil and gas pipelines in Georgia because of the ongoing conflict with Russia. "We have closed two other pipelines in Georgia -- Baku-Supsa and the South Caucasus pipeline, which is a gas pipeline," a BP spokesman told AFP. The key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which BP also operates, was shut last week after a blast occurred in a pump at a section in eastern Turkey. Russia's armed forces on Tuesday denied deliberately targeting the strategic BTC conduit running through Georgia after Tbilisi claimed it had been...

The farther Russia's tanks roll into Georgia, the more the world is beginning to see the reality of Vladimir Putin's Napoleonic ambitions. Having consolidated his authoritarian transition as Prime Minister with a figurehead President, Mr. Putin is now pushing to reassert Russian dominance in Eurasia. Ukraine is in his sights, and even the Baltic states could be threatened if he's allowed to get away with it. The West needs to draw a line at Georgia. No matter who fired the first shot last week in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, Moscow is using the separatist issue as an...

<p>RUSTAVI, Georgia — Russian jets targeted a key oil pipeline in Georgia yesterday with more than 50 missiles in a raid that raised fears that the conflict would tighten Moscow's stranglehold on Europe's energy supplies.</p> <p>Deep craters pockmarked the landscape south of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in a Y-shaped pattern straddling the British-operated pipeline. The attack left two deep holes less than 100 yards either side of a pressure vent on the pipeline. Shrapnel of highly engineered munitions littered the area, but there was no visible damage to the pipeline.</p>

Russian jets targeted a key oil pipeline with over 50 missiles in a weekend bombing raid in Georgia that raised fears the conflict will tighten Moscow's stranglehold on Europe's energy supplies. Deep craters pockmark the landscape south of the Georgian capital Tblisi in a Y-shaped pattern straddling the British-operated pipeline. The attack left two deep holes less than 100 yards either side of a pressure vent on the pipeline. Shrapnel of highly engineered munitions litters the area. There was no visible damage to the pipeline. Its vulnerability is summed up by a yellow hazard sign next to the vent warning...