The 1768 km long Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline connects the Caspian and the Mediterranean sea. It will transport over 1 million barrels of oil (about 1 per cent of world production) a day once it is fully filled.
The geopolitical significance of the pipeline cannot be underestimated. The new "Silk Road of the 21st century" (in the words of Turkish president Ahmet Necdet Sezer) will turn some of the poor countries of the region into wealthy energy states and change the political balance of power in the region. Russia, which has been bypassed, is one of the biggest losers of the project (economically and politically). The United States, which has given substantial support to the BTC construction, has a strong interest in guaranteeing a constant military presence in the strategically important area.
The Caspian pipeline was mainly built to relieve the West's oil dependency on the unstable Middle East and the OPEC producers. Its key objective was to improve American and European security of energy supply. But the original hype over the vast Caspian reserves has tailed off. Energy experts from the American Energy Information Administration (EIA) now estimate the oil reserves of the region at between 17 billion and 33 billion barrels (comparable to the North Sea oil reserves) and several big oil companies have decided to pull out of exploring in the region. Some are even questioning the economic viability of the 2.5 billion euro BTC project.
