US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Tuesday that Kazakhstan was committed to a planned Washington-backed oil pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Richardson, speaking to reporters during a visit to the Kazakh capital Astana, said Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev had "reaffirmed Kazakhstan's commitment to secure its participation in a Trans-CaspianBaku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline."
The US has heavily backed the two to four billion dollar project to take Caspian crude from Azerbaijan's capital Baku to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, which could become operational in 2004.
The Baku-Ceyhan link, which would avoid Russia in the north and Iran in the south, would give the US a major economic and political foothold in the turbulent region.
But the project has come under criticism for its high budget amid concern over whether Azerbaijan has enough oil to make the pipeline commercially viable.
Its future is expected to depend on crude commitments from Kazakhstan and the size of oil reserves it has discovered at Kashagan on the Kazakh sector of the Caspian shelf.
"In addition to possible other oil from Kazakhstan we hope strongly that Kazakhstan's partners and operator will secure capacity in this pipeline for Kashagan's early oil," Richardson said. But Kazakhstan has kept its options open.
Its first priority is a 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) pipeline project to transport oil from the giant Tengiz field to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk.
The United States as well as Russia and Iran are some of the major players battling for influence over the transportation of oil and gas from the resource-rich Central Asian region. - (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
