ECONOMY
PUBLIC INVITED TO COMMENT ON BTC PIPELINE
The meetings are being organized on behalf of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), both of which are considering whether to lend money to the pipeline project. The pipeline will run 1,760km from oilfields in the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, through Georgia to a terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. (Although Turkey is not one of the EBRD’s countries of operation, the EBRD is liaising closely with the IFC on BTC issues in Turkey and a keen observer of the stakeholder meetings in that country.)
The Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) for the pipeline and its complementary project, phase one of the Azeri, Chirag and deepwater Gunashli (ACG) project, are available for public comment for 120 days, until 14 October 2003. The schedule for the multi-stakeholder meetings, which will provide valuable comments from communities affected by the projects, is as follows: Erzurum, Turkey, (Tuesday, August 26), Adana, Turkey, (Thursday, August 28), Ganja, Azerbaijan, (Monday, September 1), Baku, Azerbaijan (Thursday, September 4).