Balkan Oil Pipeline Agreement Moves Project Closer to Reality

[Minstrel Boy]

Balkan Oil Pipeline Agreement Moves Project Closer to Reality

VOA 30/12/2004


Prime ministers of three Balkan countries this week signed an agreement in Bulgaria to build an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.

The rival proposal involves Romania, Serbia and Croatia. This pipeline would extend from the Romanian port of Constanta, across Romania to Serbia, where it would feed into an existing line that continues into Croatia. From there the Russian and Caspian Sea oil would flow northwest into Austria and Italy. The competing southern route extends from the Bulgarian port of Bourgas, across the mountains of Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlore where it would be transferred to tankers.

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Greece is backing the southern route but is interested in having the pipeline turn south to a Greek port instead of reaching the sea in Albania. Russia, which is the key player in both projects, has yet to make its preference clear. By flowing through the Balkans, Russian and Caspian Sea crude would not have to go by tanker through the crowded Bosporus Strait of western Turkey.

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The southern route has been under consideration for 12 years. It is being promoted by a U.S. based company called AMBO (Albania Macedonia Bulgaria Oil).

http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=11833


Oil and the Future Shape of Macedonia

Although it has been proposed since 1994, the Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria (AMBO) oil pipeline still does not exist. Pipeline backers blame several issues for this, including: stonewalling on country signings because of the Macedonia name issue (in 1998-99); a continuing wait on a clear means of supply from the Caspian; the shoddy state of refineries in Albania- two are closed, the third barely functional.

The main reason, however, is that the American priority had been building the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline linking the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. This pipeline avoided competing Russian and Iranian routes, in order to bolster the position of US ally Turkey. For a long time it didn’t seem this would be done, but now that it is, attention can return to the Balkans- perhaps.

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Suspicions rose that AMBO president Ted Ferguson, a former head of Brown and Root’s energy division, would have benefited from the appointment of Dick Cheney as vice president, since Cheney was the former president of Halliburton (which owns B&R). In Macedonia, the connection was made when Brown and Root set up shop near- you guessed it- Kumanovo and Corridor 8. However, this branch of B&R was the civil engineering division- not energy. And, while B&R did execute the TDA feasibility study a few years ago, their future involvement in the project is not a given.

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AMBO backers affirm that a large military presence would be required to protect the pipeline. Even without one, would-be terrorists probably wouldn’t be able to find it, buried inconspicuously 6 meters underground. Were an oil pipeline to be built, and the rest of the highway constructed, Macedonia’s north-eastern quadrant would all of a sudden assume much greater importance than it does now. Along with the Ohrid Accord’s decentralization of power, the beefed-up military presence might guarantee security for the area. The whole thing would become one big buffer zone.
http://www.stopthenato.org/m/zit/id_ses/139cd179b/id_p/10/opt/read_e/id_s/536.html