Azeri-Israeli energy plans intact

"So far, there is no influence" on the Eilat Ashkelon oil pipeline, company spokesman Avi Shubert told United Press International. "We'll have to wait and see."

According to the United Press International, he said that the conflict so far wasn't scaring away international partners to the venture.

The pipeline, still under construction, will connect the Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon with the Red Sea port city of Eilat, at Israel's southern tip.

Many in Israel, including Minister of National Infrastructures Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, and Mordechay Shalev, the pipeline company's deputy general manager, have spoken of the pipeline as the world's next big energy corridor, from the Caspian Sea and Europe to India and the Far East.

The two traveled to Azerbaijan in early June as part of an Israeli delegation and met with the president of the Azerbaijani state oil company, SOCAR, to discuss this idea.

The idea is an extension of the newly inaugurated Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean -- a pipeline inaugurated on the second day of the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese group.

"I'm positive that the long-term plans (for the pipeline) are not going to be affected," Arthur Lenk, Israel's ambassador to Azerbaijan, told UPI. "I've met with people from SOCAR in the last few weeks and plans are not going to be changed by a local incident."

"Israel will get back to normal and then business will get back to normal," Lenk said.

/www.upi.com/