Russia seeking ways to bypass Chechnya
Russia is planning to tap international capital markets for funds to build a pipeline bypassing its rebel region of
Chechnya.
The most likely plan is to issue bonds convertible into 5 % of state-owned pipeline operator Transneft to raise $ 200
million for the new pipeline, Andrei Pershin, spokesman for Energy Minister Boris Nemtsov, said. Such a deal would
not only remove Chechnya's leverage over Moscow, which has promised to deliver early oil from Azerbaijan's huge
Caspian reserves to the Black Sea, but would kick off privatisation of the Transneft monopoly. "This alternative for
financing the construction of a pipeline bypassing Chechnya seems the most realistic at the moment, although there
are other alternatives," Pershin said. At present oil from Azerbaijan has to run through a 90-mile pipeline crossing
Chechnya.
But Nemtsov said that Russia would build a 176-mile pipeline between Khasavyurt in Russia's republic of Dagestan to
Terskoye, in its republic of North Ossetia, linking two pipelines not running through Chechnya.