US Hopes of Oil Supply Stability Still a Pipe Dream

IT IS being proclaimed as the ‘Silk Road’ of the 21st-century, opening up a flow of wealth from East to West almost unrivalled since the days of Marco Polo. The 1,000-mile, $3.6bn Trans-Caucasian oil pipeline between the landlocked Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean will deliver one million barrels a day to western markets, with the ‘black gold’ starting to flow along the final section to Turkey this week.

Western officials, including those in Britain, last week hailed the official opening of a key section of the world’s second longest pipeline as a technological triumph for the BP-led consortium that built it.

Yet despite the lavish toasting in Georgian ‘champagne’ and the congratulatory speeches, there is a concern that the pipeline will prove to be another example of the extent to which the control of western oil supplies is inexorably slipping into untrustworthy hands.
Scotsman.com