Activists criticise BP-led Baku-Ceyhan pipeline
Date: 30-Oct-02
Country: UK
The groups include UK-based and international agencies such as Friends of the Earth, Platform and Corner House, and are urging international agencies and governments not to finance the planned multi-billion dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
"This project will cost $3.3 billion and much of this must be funded by public money," Friends of the Earth head Tony Juniper told a seminar at Britain's Houses of Parliament.
"There are grave reservations about whether public money should fund this project, given the concerns surrounding it."
Construction started last month on the 1,100-mile Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which has been on the drawing board for almost a decade because of political and financial bottlenecks.
If finished on schedule, it will carry a million barrels a day of crude from Azerbaijan's section of the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan in Turkey and from there to Western markets.
BP holds a 33 percent stake in the venture, Unocal has 8.9 percent, Norway's Statoil 8.7 percent and the Azeri state oil company SOCAR 25 percent. The remainder is owned by Turkish, French, Japanese and Saudi firms.
But the campaigners say the pipeline will further damage the Caspian's delicate ecology and that the impoverished populations of the three participating countries will not benefit from the oil revenues because of corruption.
BP denies the allegations, saying the project will be built to the highest environmental standards.
"The governments and peoples of the three countries are very keen on the project as it will provide Azerbaijan an outlet for its crude and revenues from oil exports," a BP spokesman said.
BP also discounted activists' fears that the pipeline would displace agricultural communities. "The pipeline will not affect people as it is a buried pipeline," the spokesman said.
