Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline

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Course of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
Sign for the " Heydər-Əliyev -Pipeline" not far from its beginning at the Səngəçal terminal (in the background)

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline , also known as the BTC Pipeline or Transcaucasian Pipeline , is a pipeline that transports crude oil from oil fields in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan on the Turkish Mediterranean coast . The commissioning of this 1760-kilometer oil pipeline began in 2005. It is intended to make the West more independent of crude oil from the Persian Gulf region .

On June 4, 2006, the first oil tanker with 600,000 barrels of oil from the BTC pipeline left the port in Ceyhan. The official opening ceremonies were on July 14, 2006. Over 40 heads of government from all over the world were invited.

Technical specifications

The BTC pipeline starts at the Səngəçal terminal south of Baku (named after a nearby settlement, district of Baku; Sangachal in English ), crosses Azerbaijan (442 kilometers), runs through Georgia (248 kilometers) and Turkey (1070 kilometers) to end in a loading station at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan . Mountains up to 2800 meters high have to be overcome. The pipeline has eight pump stations, two pig stations and 87 valve block stations. It is buried a meter underground along its entire length so that it is protected from acts of sabotage . It usually has a diameter of 42 inches (about one meter), near Ceyhan it narrows to 36 inches. It has a life expectancy of around 50 years. When the planned full capacity is reached, it will transport one million barrels (160,000 cubic meters) of oil per day . It contains around 10 million barrels of oil. Transportation costs are said to be $ 3.2 per barrel.

The construction costs amounted to around 2.5 billion euros provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development , which the World Bank Group belonging to International Finance Corporation funded and a group of 15 private banks.

The owner is a consortium made up of eleven oil companies , in which the British BP group holds the largest share with 30.1%, followed by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) with 25%. Construction of the facility began in 2002.

politics

Azerbaijan has been trying to defend its independence against Russia since its independence . Since the collapse of the Soviet Union , Russia has tried to make the republics in the South Caucasus dependent on itself and is directly or indirectly involved in all conflicts. In 1993, the pro-Turkish President of Azerbaijan Əbülfəz Elçibəy was overthrown in a coup that was obviously Moscow's signature. The former KGB general Heydər Əliyev managed to prevent Moscow's preferred candidate, Surət Hüseynov , from taking over power by himself.

Əliyev's strategy was to secure the independence of Azerbaijan with the help of its energy resources. The export of oil and natural gas should not only fill the state treasury, but also strengthen the West's interest in Azerbaijan and its independence. Azerbaijan demonstratively excluded Russian companies from the treaty of the century for the exploitation of Azerbaijani oil and gas reserves. After another failed coup attempt in 1994, Russia lost all military influence over Azerbaijan. The only means by which Russia could still exercise control of Azerbaijan was through the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline , through which Azerbaijani oil could be exported westward. This pipeline would have been cheap to modernize and expand, but at the time it ran through Chechnya , which had declared its independence in 1991. The western oil companies had no confidence in the Chechen President Jokhar Dudayev . In 1994 , Russia invaded Chechnya and failed to gain control of the small breakaway republic and the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline that ran through Chechnya. This and the rejection of Russian imperialism in the eyes of earlier Soviet republics made the construction of a pipeline bypassing Russian territory feasible and attractive despite the high costs.

The energy importers among the western states have an interest in diversifying their energy supplies. The United States put pressure on Azerbaijan in particular to ensure that no Iranian companies are represented in the consortium for the development of Azerbaijani oil and gas reserves. In addition, they wanted to avoid the Azerbaijani oil being transported through Iran to the sea, which would have been the cheapest route but would have given Iran a lot of leverage. It was important to Azerbaijan not to touch the territory of Armenia because of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its poor relations with Armenia . The route through Georgia was therefore the most expensive option.

On October 29, 1998, the presidents of Turkey ( Süleyman Demirel ), Georgia ( Eduard Shevardnadze ), Azerbaijan ( Heydər Əliyev ) and the USA ( Bill Clinton ) signed a letter of intent to build the pipeline in Ankara , with which the project took off. After negotiations that lasted a few months, the contract to build the pipeline between the governments of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia was signed on November 18, 1999 on the sidelines of the OSCE summit in Istanbul . The groundbreaking ceremony took place on September 18, 2002 in Baku.

The pipeline has strengthened Turkey as a regional power because it makes it less dependent on oil and gas supplies from Russia and Iran. Through the project, Russia has lost control of Azerbaijan, which Moscow actually sees in its sphere of influence; In addition, Russia misses the high transit fees that would have been incurred when exporting through Russian territory.

hazards

Stamps of Azerbaijan, 2003-640.jpg

Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey intend to form a military alliance to protect the pipeline. The government in Tbilisi has recalled a 400-man special unit that was trained by US instructors. The Americans want the BTC pipeline with additional unmanned drones of the type Global Hawk monitored to prevent terrorist attacks.

Shortly before the escalation into the Caucasus War in 2008 there was an act of sabotage against the pipeline on the Turkish side, whereupon it was closed. During armed conflict in August 2008, Russian bombers are said to have targeted the line in a targeted manner. The pipeline was not hit, but the oil delivery was temporarily suspended. The British oil company and main operator British Petroleum also had to shut down the Baku-Supsa pipeline , which runs parallel to BTC, at short notice because the port city of Poti had been occupied by Russian troops.

Resistance to the pipeline was mainly in the camp of environmentalists . In August 2004, the pipeline construction site had to be shut down for two weeks because the minimum requirements for environmental protection were not met. The pipeline crosses the planned Gobustan National Park (Azerbaijan), the Qtsia Tabatskuri protected area (Georgia), the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park (Georgia) and the wildlife reserve in Posof (Turkey). A pipeline accident could cause lasting damage to their ecosystems . The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has criticized the project. The Oxford- based Baku-Ceyhan Campaign opposes the use of public funds for projects that are “solely in the interests of the private sector”.

BTC consortium

Culture

The BTC pipeline was the central plot of the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999). One of the main characters, Elektra King ( Sophie Marceau ), is responsible for the construction of an oil pipeline that leads from the Caspian Sea through the Caucasus to the Turkish Mediterranean coast.

See also

literature

  • Rainer Freitag-Wirminghaus: Geopolitics on the Caspian Sea: The struggle for new energy resources . Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies, Cologne 1998
  • Bülent Gökay: Caspian uncertainties: regional rivalries and pipelines . In: Perceptions . Vol. 3 (1998/99) (1998), 1, pp. 49-66
  • Ian Bremmer: Oil politics: America and the riches of the Caspian Basin . In: World policy journal . New York, NY: Inst., ISSN  0740-2775 , Vol. 15 (1998), 1, pp. 27-35
  • Daniel Yergin: The Price: The Hunt for Oil, Money and Power . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-10-095804-7
  • Michael P. Croissant (Ed.): Oil and geopolitics in the Caspian Sea region . Praeger, Westport, Conn. 1999, ISBN 0-275-96395-0
  • Vakhtang Maisaia: The Caucasus-Caspian Regional Security Agenda in the 21st Century: Caspian Oil Geopolitics and Georgia . Global Print, Tbilisi 2002
  • Hooman Peimani: The Caspian pipeline dilemma: political games and economic losses . Praeger, Westport, Conn. 2001, ISBN 0-275-97092-2
  • Mehdi Parvizi Amineh: Globalization, geopolitics and energy security in Central Eurasia and the Caspian region . Clingersael International Energy Program, The Hague 2003, ISBN 90-5031-085-0
  • Nadine Haase: Global Actors in the Caspian Region: The Importance of Oil Companies in Decision-Making Processes on Transnational Oil Export Routes . Free University of Berlin, diploma thesis, 2003
  • S. Frederick Starr, Svante E. Cornell (Eds.): The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline: Oil Window to the West . Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, Washington DC, Uppsala 2005, ISBN 91-85031-06-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, ISBN 0-7656-3003-6 , pp. 343 .
  2. ^ Marie-Carin von Gumppenberg: The Caucasus: History, Culture, Politics . 2nd Edition. Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-56800-8 , pp. 83 .
  3. ^ Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, ISBN 0-7656-3003-6 , pp. 350 .
  4. ^ A b Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, ISBN 0-7656-3003-6 , pp. 345 .
  5. ^ Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, ISBN 0-7656-3003-6 , pp. 346 .
  6. ↑ Houman A. Sadri and Omar Vera-Muñiz: Iranian relations with the South Caucasus . In: Thomas Juneau and Sam Razavi (eds.): Iranian Foreign Policy since 2001 . Routledge, Abingdon 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-82743-0 , pp. 151 .
  7. ↑ Zeyno Baran: The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline: Implications for Turkey . In: S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell (Eds.): The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline: Oil Window to the West . Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, Washington and Uppsala 2005, ISBN 91-85031-06-2 , pp. 106 .
  8. ↑ Zeyno Baran: The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline: Implications for Turkey . In: S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell (Eds.): The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline: Oil Window to the West . Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, Washington and Uppsala 2005, ISBN 91-85031-06-2 , pp. 107 .
  9. ↑ Thomas Franke: Oil pipeline with consequences . Deutsche Welle , May 26, 2005.
  10. ^ Explosion along the BTC Pipeline confirms civil society concerns . ( Memento of October 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Bank Information Center, August 7, 2008.
  11. ↑ Reinhard Veser: Georgia: The EU, the war and the oil . In: FAZ.NET . August 21, 2008, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed January 7, 2018]).