SITUATION IN GEORGIA WILL NOT HARM PIPELINE PROJECTS
"Revenues Georgia makes on these projects will be almost half the country's budget," Shevardnadze said. The president was giving a national radio interview on Monday.
The World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) decided not long ago to financially back the building of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, he noted, which will "bring Georgia enormous returns." This will be the longest in the world and have great throughput capacity, he said. Almost every expert holds that "from an ecological point of view, this project has no equal in its reliability and safety," he said.
The building of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline will "make possible the full 'gasification' of Georgia," Shevardnadze said.
As reported earlier, political opposition in the country has been staging many acts of protects in the Georgian capital, seeking the cancellation of the November 2 parliamentary election results. The pro- government bloc emerged the leader, but opposition figures claim the results were rigged.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline carries an estimated $2.95 billion price tag. It will run for 1,767 kilometers, with 443 km in Azerbaijan, 248 km in Georgia and 1,076 km in Turkey. Its throughput capacity will be 50 million tonnes of oil a year. The construction began this past April and should wrap up in the fourth quarter of next year.
Project members are: BP (30.1%), State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR, 25%), Unocal (8.9%), Statoil (8.71%), Turkey's TPAO (6.53%), Eni (5%), Itochu (3.4%), ConocoPhillips (2.5%) and INP.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline will run 442 km through Azerbaijan and 248 km through Georgia, with pumping capacity of 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually.
Project participants are: BP (25.5%), Statoil (25.5%), the Russian- Italian LUKAgip (10%), TotalFinaElf (10%), SOCAR (10%), Iran's OEIC (10%) and TPAO (9%).
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