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Thanks, Charles. Yes, I had heard this. There was a collective sigh of relief (but far short of a loud hooray - that will have to wait until the deal is signed) in our Azerbaijan group. The following says it all:
> Turkey opposes a Russian plan that all crude oil from the
project, estimated to reach 700,000 barrels per day by
2010, should be transported to the West through the Black
Sea and Turkey's busy Bosphorus straits.
> Relations between Moscow and NATO-member Turkey
have often been strained in the past, most recently over
Ankara's sympathetic stance towards Russia's breakaway
Chechnya region.
Transportation of crude from the Caspian, with all the attendant political problems, causes us far more difficulties than anything else in the projects (that's plural - we operate three fields and have just signed a major agreement in Kazakhstan). Gotta love the oil business, boy. Everyone is getting into, let us say, the less desirable places in the world. I work on the geology in offshore Angola for example. You know, Luanda (the capital) used to be a fairly nice place, but twenty years of civil war inevitably takes its toll. The sewage in the harbor could use cleaning up, too. Not much room for GRNO though. Too few cars just now.
Mike
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