Terror alert as Caspian oil pipeline opens

‘A terrorist attack is the greatest threat we face,’ says the guards’ commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Giorgi Pantskhava, an energetic Georgian in desert fatigues and aviator shades.

The $4bn (

The pipeline – 70 per cent funded by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and export credit agencies – took three years to build and will carry up to one million barrels of oil a day to western markets. Yet its position on the faultline between Russia and its estranged former Soviet neighbours makes it a shaky bet.

Guardian