Analysis: BTC pipeline explosion

It's UPI. The link is the cached link to allow people to read it without registering with UPI. Right click and open in a new window.

Still (it being UPI and all)...it adds a little more info to the overall picture.



Analysis: BTC pipeline explosion

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Following the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, a new "Great Game" began, this time between Russia and the United States, which replaced Britain in a protracted, covert struggle for the Caucasus and Central Asia, the ultimate prize being the region's vast energy reserves, particularly those of the Caspian. A decade ago Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton CEO, remarked, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian."

The problem for Washington was how to export rising volumes of Azeri oil without using the traditional network of Soviet-era pipelines, which transited northward to Russia's Black Sea Novorossiisk port, or constructing export facilities southward through Iran, subject to U.S. sanctions. The solution was the construction by an international consortium of the $3.6 billion, 1 million barrel per day, 1,092-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which began operations in May 2005. Now a mysterious fire on a portion of the BTC transiting Turkey has caused BTC operator British Petroleum to declare force majeure, and if the investigation reveals possible sabotage by the separatist Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK), as indicated in initial sketchy Turkish media reports, then the West's most expensive post-Soviet energy success has become a new front line in the nearly 30-year war between the PKK and Ankara.

The BTC transits high-quality crude from Azerbaijan's offshore Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields to Turkey's deepwater Mediterranean terminus at Ceyhan.

Initial Turkish media reports stated an explosion occurred in the Refahiye BTC section, which resulted in a conflagration sending flames 160 feet into the air and halting oil flow. According to the reports, investigators are attempting to determine whether the explosion was an industrial accident or, more ominously, the result of PKK sabotage.

Hoo-boy. :popcorn:

Or perhaps 50...

:(

showing they have the ability to destroy it?

Only "Georgian minister said that...".

I'm sure tnat if the Russians intended to damage the pipe they'd succeed without much problem. I seriously believe this to be propaganda from yet another bent adminstration.

:shrug:

their OIL

but may not have realised it would be the Turkish section which would be hit. They'd already re-routed the pipe which was originally to have run through Armenia, being the direct route, through Georgia which seemed safer....ha ha !

This timeline goes back a few decades for perspective
http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm



here's a great map

we can all know that *co is at the core of it. The Monkey and Pooty Poot had a spat today over the whole thing. Since we know that Putin has the soul of iron, I'm betting our fool lost and oil just went up again.