Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and US sign Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan MoU
Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakhstani, Turkish and US officials met in Astana to discuss the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline project and sign a memorandum of understanding on the export of oil from Kazakhstan through that
pipeline.
The document was signed by Valekh Aleskerov, head of the foreign investment department at the State Oil Company of
Azerbaijan (SOCAR); Giorgi Chanturia, president of the Georgian International Oil Corp (GIOC); Kairgeldy Kabyldin,
vice president of Kazakhstan's state oil pipeline operator KazTransOil; Yurdakul Yigitguden, Turkey's undersecretary
of energy; and Elizabeth Jones, the special advisor to the US president and secretary of state on Caspian energy
issues.
Kabyldin emphasized after the signing that the MoU did not obligate Kazakhstan to provide any oil for transport
through the pipeline. Instead, the document will make it possible for Kazakhstan to export some of its crude along
the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route should it choose to do so, he said. (Kazakhstan would presumably do so by sending its
oil across the Caspian Sea in tankers from Aktau to Baku for loading into the pipeline.)
The MoU was signed shortly after the announcement was made that the US oil company Chevron had decided to help build
the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze added on February 26, in a speech broadcast
on the national radio station, that Chevron was ready to carry out some of the basic engineering work for the project
as well as participate in the construction of the pipeline.
Meanwhile, other sources hinted that Chevron might play a role in the provision of Kazakhstani oil for export via the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route. Texaco, which is due to be taken over by Chevron, has indicated that it may use the
pipeline to Ceyhan to export oil from its Northern Buzachi field, located in Kazakhstan's western Mangistau region.