Word: baku
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...control room of Azerbaijan's sprawling oil terminal near the capital, Baku, Bala Mirza sits peering at a fuzzy map on a computer monitor. The outline of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey looks like little more than a jumble of hills and farming towns. But for the engineer, 41, what lies underground has rocked his world: a new 1,100-mile oil pipeline, which in recent months has tied this tiny country on the edge of the Caspian Sea to the huge Western market. "There is a lot of oil and a lot of money," says Mirza, who spent 14 years...
...distressing problems: how the U.S. and Europe will secure enough oil and gas to power cities, factories, airplanes and cars--in short, how to keep our entire modern lives afloat. Since last June, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day have surged through a pipeline running from Baku through Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Named the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), the $4 billion pipeline is one of the world's longest and is operated by the British-American oil company BP, with partners that include U.S. oil companies Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Hess...
...which some estimates have put as large as 200 billion bbl. (vs. 260 billion in Saudi Arabia), could deliver economic independence to the South Caucasus region and energy independence to the West. "This is about diversifying energy supplies," says Michael Townshend, a BP executive who ran the project in Baku until last year. "It is not from the Middle East and it is not from Russia...
...crisis, spurred by some emotional and erratic outbursts from Georgia, may actually suit Moscow's agenda, since the deeper issue driving the conflict is Georgia's geopolitical orientation: Georgia has joined the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that skirts Russia and ends its monopoly on transporting Caspian Sea oil to world markets; it has defied Moscow on a range of regional issues; and it is attempting to join NATO, presenting the Russian military brass with the prospect of a strategic rival strengthening its position along Russia's southern underbelly. In short, the crisis is an expression of Russia's failure...
...Though it's careful not to annoy Russia - ever a major and jealous presence and a key market - Kazakhstan nevertheless had a pipeline built, allowing transport of its oil directly to China. To Russia's chagrin, it also joined the U.S.-sponsored Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that breaks Russia's long-standing monopoly on delivering Caspian Sea oil to world markets, though the pipeline does not cross its own territory. The plan was to lay an additional pipe across the Caspian seabed to Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, but Russia protested, citing potential ecological damage. So Kazakhstan ships oil there...