Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline connects Central Asia to the world market

The first tanker carrying Azerbaijani crude delivered via the long-awaited Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline is about to complete loading at the sparkling new BTC terminal at Ceyhan. Platts John Roberts visited southern Turkey to report on the completion of a 14-year dream for a direct oil pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean and assesses both the pipeline's own security and its contribution to security of supply.

It's evening in Turkey's Taurus mountains. The gravel road careers down the mountain side. Every so often it crosses a great scar of newly-turned earth, stone and sand. The jet black Scorpion armored car heading up the hillside spots an intruder, turns around and orders the car to halt. Four gendarmes, guns at the ready, take up position. They're nervous. This is the last stretch of the $4.4 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and underneath the scar that marks the buried pipe, Azerbaijani crude has just begun to flow on the final leg of its 1,774 kilometer journey to Ceyhan.

The security threats are many and varied, and its difficult to evaluate just how much of a danger each of them poses to the line which is, after all, buried several meters down for its entire length.

"The terrorists have started to move over here, because of the pipeline," says the gendarmerie sergeant - after he's checked out the intruding vehicle - a hired car carrying this journalist, a local colleague and our driver. He's polite, efficient. Identity cards are checked with headquarters, papers examined. "The Taurus is a good place for terrorists," the sergeant continues. "They can move around very easily." Stop soon, he warns us, "it's not good to travel these roads at night".

At this stage, it's not that there is a direct threat to the massive BTC project so much as a general feeling that, with a new pipeline in place that will eventually bring a million barrels a day of Azerbaijan crude onto the market - and which could wind up delivering close to double that amount from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan combined - security has to be a priority.

"There are quite high intensity security measures being taken at the moment," says Kaan Tuncok, site manager at Ceyhan for Botas Petroleum Pipeline Corporation, which took delivery the new Ceyhan terminal from its construction contractors in March.

Security threats

The security threats are many and varied, and its difficult to evaluate just how much of a danger each of them poses to the line which is, after all, buried several meters down for its entire length. The first threat is that tensions between countries may make the pipeline a target.

The line originates in Azerbaijan, which remains in dispute with Armenia as a result of the persistent Nagorny- Karabagh conflict. Although a ceasefire has been in for 13 years, Armenian forces still occupy both Nagorny- Karabagh itself - a largely Armenian-populated autonomous district of Azerbaijan - and also substantial districts outside the territory.

As a result, Armenian are encamped in the foothills below Nagorny-Karabagh just 15 kilometers or so from the pipeline.

Then there is Georgia, a country which still confronts two separatist revolts and which consistently feels threatened by what it considers to be undue pressure by external powers. In other words, it fears both continuing Russian support for separatist forces, and potential Russian intervention in mainstream Georgia as well.

And there are local issues too. The route through Georgia required extensive revision and re-plotting to ensure it went through communities deemed supportive of the central government in Tbilisi. In a world in which Iraqi oil installations are a prime target for insurgents, pipelines get blown up routinely in Colombia, and Nigerian infrastructure is brutalized by everyone from local militia groups to villagers seeking to secure illicit crude, nothing can be taken for granted.

Attempts to tap into the line illegally - the issue that led to Russia's above-ground line through Groznyy in Chechnya being described as a little better than a sieve - are probably the least of the problems confronting BTC, while making peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia - or improving relations between Georgia and Russia is clearly outside the brief of the 10-company consortium that is the BTC Corporation.

But the tension engendered by such problems means BTC cannot afford to take its eye off the line. So there are daily foot patrols along key sections; constant aerial surveillance over its full length; and, in Turkey, around 30-35 gendarmerie posts dedicated to the project

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