Turkish pipeline explosion prompts worries over BTC security

"The problem that has occurred on the Iran-Turkey pipeline has not affected the BTC pipeline," the community outreach officer of BP in Tbilisi, Tamila Chantladze, told The Messenger.

Chantladze said that BP is cooperating with the Georgian government on security efforts for the pipeline, with the government responsible for providing physical protection. A joint agreement between BP and the governments of the three countries through which the pipeline runs-Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey-stipulates security patrols for the pipeline. Georgia, though, has signed a further deal with BP for complementary security arrangements. The Ministry of Interior Affairs runs patrols of the Georgian section of the pipeline with forces from the Strategic Pipeline Protection Department (SPPD), a 700-employee strong special division of the Georgian government.

Under the 2004 agreement, BP paid USD 2 million to equip and train SPPD patrol officers. The company pays an additional USD 1 million to the government for operational expenses every year.

"However, despite the Georgian government providing protection service for the pipeline, we also cooperate with the local population and with the local governments where the BTC runs, to additionally provide patrolling and monitoring of the pipeline by people we hire there," Chantladze told the paper.

While there is substantial infrastructure above ground, such as block valves-devices that change the direction of the oil flow-the pipeline itself is buried at least one metre underground along the entire route. The pump stations, situated above the ground, have high security measures including concrete blast walls, closed-circuit cameras, and satellite monitoring in addition to patrols from helicopters and officers on the ground.

Nevertheless, Archil Gegeshidze of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies says that pipelines, being crucial infrastructure objects, are under constant danger, and BTC hosting countries need to guarantee stringently high security measures.

"This explosion has to be understood as a signal that strategic objects need special attention. Terrorism as a method for achieving results, as the global experience has shown, has proved to be a growing tendency lately," Gegeshidze said, speaking with The Messenger. Still, despite intensive efforts to protect objects like the BTC pipeline from sabotage, "it is impossible to provide 100 percent security."

Stretching 1,760 kilometres from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, with 8 pumping stations and 101 block valves, the BTC is the second longest pipeline in the world. The nearly USD 4 billion project, completed in 2006 after significant wrangling and delay, is designed to have a normal working capacity of 1 million barrels a day.

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