Pipeline linkinng Kazakhstan oil fields to Russian Black Sea port is completed

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This may help contain oil prices next year.

AP-Moscow. An International consortium said Wednesday that it has completed construction of an oil pipeline connecting petroleum fields in western Kazakhstan to a Russian Black Sea port, giving a boost to Russia's ambition of controlling a main route to world oil markets. The 948-mile pipeline will deliver its first oil from the Tengiz oil fields to the Russian port of Novorossiysk in mid-2001, after pumping and signaling equipment is installed, said Natalia Prutkovskaya, a spokeswoman for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.

The $2.5 billion pipeline is expected to ship 600,000 barrels a day - a substantial boost to the exports of Kazakhstan, which is believed to have the region's largest oil deposits.

Fifty percent of the consortium is controlled by the governments of Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman. The rest is controlled by international oil companies, among them Chevron's Caspian Pipeline Consortium Co., with 15 percent of shares, and Mobil Caspian Pipeline Co., with 7.5 percent.

The united States has been pushing for another pipeline to be the main export route for oil from the Caspian Sea. U.S. officials say the 1080-mile pipeline between Baku, Azerbaijan, and Ceyhan, Turkey, extimated to cost $2.4 billion, could be finished as early as 2004. That route would reduce the dependence of Central Asian and Caucasus countries on export routes through Russia and reduce the volume of oil being transported from the Black Sea through the narrow Bosporus Strait. But some oi companies say the route will be more expensive than existing ones.

-- johnn littmann (littmannj@aol.com), November 23, 2000

Answers

Good, good, everything is going smoothly according to Daddy's plan. As soon as the juice starts flowing for Chevron and Mobil, we can finish off Saddam move on the Iraqui fields. I'll just have to lay the bullshit on real heavy so the people won't notice that I'm beefing up our military to fight for oil.

Then, in 2004 when we get that Caspian connection on line, we can kick ass on Russia and steal their share of the juice. My buddies companies will be well on their way to controlling the entire world market for oil. Yeeehaw, me and Daddy are gonna make the Rockefellers look like underachievers!

-- Dubya (gotta.beefup@our.military), November 23, 2000.


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