Financial Times, Wednesday: US push on Caspian pipeline deal
By Leyla Boulton in Ankara
The US yesterday urged reluctant oil companies to conclude
a deal to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish
port of Ceyhan while oil prices were low at $11 a barrel.
Mark Parris, US ambassador to Turkey, said regional
governments were most likely to make maximum concessions
when the project looked least attractive commercially.
"A 30-year oil project is not built on one-year price
forecasts," he said. "So when will companies get more
favourable terms? When they come back when prices
are at $18 a barrel, will the companies be in a stronger
position? The time to decide is now."
However, he added that Turkey, Europe's fastest
growing energy market which has lobbied in favour of the
project with the US, would also have to compensate
companies for any overruns on a project Ankara
estimates would cost $2.4bn
Wref Digings, director of Caspian exports at British
Petroleum Amoco, said nobody in the industry was
"willing to bet on a sustained" rise in the price of oil.
Tomorrow, Turkey resumes negotiations with
Azerbaijan, the main Caspian exporter, and oil
companies over a possible deal. Mr Parris said the
project could promote stability in the Caspian region and
avoid the "problematic" alternative of transporting oil and
gas through Iran.
Ziya Aktas, Turkish energy minister, said that
companies also had to factor into their cost calculations
the heightened risk of an oil tanker accident in the
Bosporus, the waterway which divides Istanbul. The
waterway would see more traffic without the
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to offload extra oil from the
Caspian.
Mr Aktas said that the other priority for Turkish energy
policy was to promote a pipeline to transport natural gas
from Turkmenistan to Turkey.
After claiming the market could also support an
alternative Russian-Italian gas pipeline project, known as
Blue Stream, he brushed off suggestions by the US
ambassador that simultaneously encouraging multiple
pipeline projects could lead to none being built. |
