Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

How Secure Is New Pipeline Across Caucasus?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • How Secure Is New Pipeline Across Caucasus?

    HOW SECURE IS NEW PIPELINE ACROSS CAUCASUS?
    By Brooks Tigner, Brussels

    DefenseNews.com
    March 13 2006

    How secure is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will
    haul petrochemicals 1,760 kilometers from the Caspian Sea across the
    Caucasian peninsula to Turkey?

    Sufficiently, say members of the independent Caspian Development
    Advisory Panel, which advises BP, the lead company on the project.

    "There is very sophisticated sensor technology all along the
    pipeline. It protects against intruders, sabotage and illegal siphoning
    as well," Stuart Eizenstat, former U.S. ambassador to the European
    Union and one of the panel's four members, told a February meeting
    here, organized by the U.S. George Marshall Fund. "Any intrusion will
    alert local security forces."

    But defense analysts and officials familiar with the challenge of
    protecting the pipeline's infrastructure are skeptical.

    "Pipelines are a target of choice for terrorist and insurgent groups,"
    said David Cooper, an independent defense consultant here.

    "When you think of high-value targets, you think airports, harbors
    and energy networks."

    The buried pipeline will soon enter operation, with the first oil
    tanker to be loaded at its terminal port in Turkey by midyear.

    Together with a sister project, the South Caucasus Pipeline, the two
    networks will transport 1 million barrels of oil and 7 billion cubic
    meters of Caspian Sea supplies each year.

    "This will be a very important step forward toward security for the
    region and diversification of international energy supplies," said
    Jan Leschly, the panel's chair and founder of the Care Capital venture
    firm. "It will offer many opportunities [for BP and other companies]
    to promote stability in an unstable region via market mechanisms."

    The panel released its latest 24-page assessment of the project and
    BP's cooperation with BTC countries Feb. 14, entitled "Report on
    2005 Activities."

    According to the report, the British energy group has worked
    extensively with the three governments involved in the $3 billion
    project - Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey - to help ensure their
    security forces are properly trained to safeguard stability along
    the BTC, while respecting human rights.

    At the panel's recommendation, BP has persuaded the Georgian and Azeri
    governments to work with the U.S. security firm Equity International
    to oversee the training. Turkey rebuffed the offer and is working with
    the security forces of Northern Ireland to train its gendarmerie and
    other personnel to be stationed along the country's 1,070-kilometer
    section of the meter-wide pipeline.

    Regional Stability Questions The stability of the region through
    which BP's pipeline passes is out of its hands, however.

    The Caucasus is larded with ethnic, religious, political and military
    tensions between and within its constituent states. Turkey and Armenia
    have no diplomatic relations, for example. Azerbaijan and Armenia have
    been at low-level war with each other for 15 years over the disputed
    territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Meanwhile, Georgia has tense relations
    with Moscow, which stations troops on its territory and does little
    to discourage breakaway sentiment among Georgia's northern provinces
    adjacent to Russia.

    Moreover, corruption is widespread in the three countries, according
    to government monitoring groups. Among the 159 countries surveyed
    for government transparency in 2005 by Berlin-based Transparency
    International, Azerbaijan falls at position 137. As the Caspian panel
    notes in its report, BP's ability "to influence near-term challenges to
    [the region's] stability is limited."

    Asked if the panel has carried out its own risk-assessment of security
    threats to the two pipelines, Leschly said it did not, relying instead
    on the conclusions of independent reports commissioned by BP. One of
    the groups that BP used was Foley Hoag, a U.S. law firm with offices
    in Boston and Washington, which produced a report Jan. 31 on security
    and aspects of the project. Defense News was unable to secure a copy
    of the report by press time.

    In addition to the pipeline's sensor technology, the network will be
    patrolled by armed personnel, including those on horseback. But even
    these combined defenses leave security experts doubtful.

    "We support the pipeline idea, of course: it's good for Europe's
    security of supply, but the Caucasus is a very touch-and-go kind of
    place," said a European diplomat, who added that the region's stability
    needs to be tied more closely to the European Union's so-called
    European Neighborhood Policy of democratic and economic initiatives.

    Cooper, a former NATO defense planner, warned that the pipelines
    could be very expensive and complicated to protect if faced with
    groups bent on inflicting damage to it.

    "Pipelines are nearly possible to protect. But horseback patrols
    and ground sensors? They need high-resolution earth observation at a
    minimum," he said. "Even with the best of technology, you've got to
    have an entire organizational approach coordinated along the whole
    thing to secure it."
Working...
X