In the foothills of the Caucasus mountains, a long line of broken mud cuts across the meadows. If you go anywhere near it, camouflaged guards carrying automatic weapons emerge from the forest beyond.
These guards in the Borjomi region of Georgia -- trained by US Army and SAS (British special forces) veterans -- are pawns in a new great game gripping Central Asia: their job is to protect the oil pipeline buried 3m below.
"A terrorist attack is the greatest threat we face," said the guards' commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Giorgi Pantskhava, an energetic Georgian in desert fatigues and aviator shades.
The US$4 billion BTC -- Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan -- pipeline went on stream yesterday. It is key in US plans to reduce dependency on OPEC oil producers in the turbulent Middle East. Pumping oil 1,609km from the Caspian sea to the Mediterranean through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, it will avoid Russia -- increasingly seen by the US as a resurgent superpower prepared to use control of energy resources as a political weapon.
The pipeline -- 70 percent funded by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and export credit agencies -- took three years to build and will carry up to 1 million barrels of oil a day to Western markets. Yet its position on the faultline between Russia and its estranged former Soviet neighbors makes it a shaky bet.
The fiercely pro-Washington government of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili welcomed the BTC with open arms, said transit payments would help to kick-start the economy of the faltering ex-Soviet state.
Yet the pipeline, constructed and run by a BP-led consortium, has opened in the teeth of bitter opposition.
Green campaigners said the route passes too near to Georgia's Borjomi Gorge, a tourist spot with mineral water springs and abundant wildlife.
"If there is even a minor oil leak here then the reputation of the area will be irreparably damaged," said Vano Shalutashvili, of the Borjomi People's Democracy Institute, an organization that has fought for the pipeline to be diverted.
A leak on one section was detected in a test run this month.
Critics also said BTC passes too close to volatile breakaway regions in both Georgia and Azerbaijan, making it vulnerable to sabotage that could cause a catastrophic spill.
Locals are also furious with BP, claiming a host of problems from houses damaged by heavy traffic to polluted springs.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but