LONDON, August 12 – British Petroleum shut down an oil pipeline that runs through Georgia yesterday as a precaution at the height of hostilities between Georgia, its breakaway republics South Ossetia and Abkhazia and invading Russian forces. The pipeline however was not damaged during four days of air and land combat between the former Soviet territories.
BP said the 90,000-barrel-a-day pipeline to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast from Baku in Azerbaijan will remain closed indefinitely. Another pipeline operated by the London-based oil company in the former Soviet Republic, the larger Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, is already out of action after a fire last week on its Turkish stretch. The BTC pipeline usually provides around 1 million barrels of Caspian crude to international markets.
BP spokesman Robert Wine said that the Baku-Supsa line was closed because it runs through the center of Georgia, where there was greater risk of conflict. However, he added that BP had no reports of damage to pipelines in Georgia, despite claims from some officials there that Russian forces had attacked the lines. "I think those reports out there are inaccurate," he said. Turkish President Abdullah Gul also said Tuesday that fighting in Georgia had not damaged the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Wine later said that BP also had stopped pumping gas into the South Caucasus pipeline, which runs from the Caspian Sea through Georgia into Turkey. However, gas will continue to run though that line for another seven days.
Associated Press reported that BP would continue to assess the security situation in Georgia over the next few days to consider when to reopen the pipelines, Wine said. Georgian ports on the Black Sea are a main shipping point of Caspian Sea crude from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. More than 500,000 barrels leave these ports daily, and plans are afoot to expand capacity by an additional 200,000 barrels a day.
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