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Power struggle over oil
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| 29 January 2004 |
Oil refineries in western Europe have suffered a severe shortage of oil because Russian exports through the Bosphorus Strait have been drastically reduced in recent days. Turkish authorities say they have cut back traffic through the narrow waterway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean because of bad weather and enforcement of strict regulations governing oil traffic. Really? Foreign Report has another explanation.
The strait is considered to be one of the world's most dangerous waterways when there is bad weather, and the Turks are paranoid about collisions involving tankers that could cause explosions in the heavily populated areas around Istanbul. But European oil sources suspect that the slowdown imposed on Russian oil exports through the strait is part of an effort by the Turkish government to reduce such traffic over time because it will compete with the US-backed pipeline being laid from the oilfields outside Baku in Azerbaijan, through Tbilisi, Georgia, to Turkey's loading terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
The US$2.9bn, 1,760km pipeline, known as the BTC, is intended to be the main conduit for Caspian Sea oil to western Europe, cutting Russian and Iranian influence in the energy-rich Caspian. Due for completion in 2005, the pipeline being built by a consortium led by British oil giant BP will pump up to one million barrels per day (bpd).
In late January, at least nine large oil tankers had been waiting for weeks to enter the Black Sea to lift some 370,000 tonnes of Russian oil for export, according to officials at the port of Odessa. They said authorities had been forced to cut shipment from 1.8 million tonnes to 300,000 tonnes over the previous month after the Turks imposed strict regulations on transits to avoid possible accidents in the Bosphorus. Bad weather and increased traffic are forcing delays for about 100 vessels waiting to enter the strait.
The bloodless revolution in Georgia, where work began on a section of the pipeline in May, has produced a staunchly pro-Western government following the ousting of Eduard Shevardnadze on 23 November, blocking Russian efforts to impose its will in the former Soviet republic and take control of its bankrupt economy. Georgia is of huge strategic importance to the West and Russia, because it straddles the planned oil route.
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