AZERBAIJAN: UKRAINE’S YUSHCHENKO PUSHES FOR ODESSA-BRODY PIPELINE IN BAKU
Posted April 10, 2009 © Eurasianet
Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko visited Baku on April 10 in an
attempt to get his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, to commit to
the ambitious Odessa-Brody-Gdansk oil pipeline project.
A feasibility study of the project will be presented in Warsaw on
April 24, the Ukrainian leader announced, according to a report
distributed by the Newsazerbaijan website. In the meantime,
"consultations will continue on the level of foreign ministries," the
site quoted Yushchenko as saying.
Project stakeholders — Azerbajian, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland and
Ukraine — hope to build a conduit that would begin in Azerbaijan and
travel via Georgia and across the Black Sea to link up with Ukraine’s
Odessa-Brody pipeline. The quintet of states hopes to extend
Odessa-Brody as far as the Polish port of Gdnask on the Baltic Sea
coast and eventually, on the other end of the line, build a sub-sea
pipeline across the Caspian Sea to get Central Asian oil powerhouse
Kazakhstan onboard.
The project has evoked a good deal of skepticism among commentators
who believe that Moscow may block Kazakhstan from joining the project
by obstructing construction of the Caspian Sea pipeline. Azerbaijan
alone may not be able to provide necessary supplies, as Baku is
already committed to Turkish and Russian transit routes.