US warns: Keep Iran out
ASTANA, Kazakhstan – US Caspian envoy Stephen Mann, in Central Asian Kazakhstan to discuss energy cooperation, reiterated yesterday that the USA was keen to promote only those regional pipelines that would avoid Iran. «We very much want to discourage investment in the Iranian energy sector, regardless of the source,» Mann said when asked about a possible oil route via Iranian territory. «It’s been a very consistent policy and I’m trying to convey it to you in an undramatic way,» he told a press conference in the new Kazakh capital of Astana. «It’s not a secret. I make this clear in all of my discussions with regional governments.» US President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address on January 29, branded Iran part of an «axis of evil,» along with Iraq and North Korea, as being committed to developing weapons of mass destruction and posing a direct threat to US security. Mann underlined US support for a planned $3-billion pipeline from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Last year Mann said plans for that pipeline were moving ahead. The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline would run westward from the Caspian across Azerbaijan, Georgia and NATO-ally Turkey, crossing only US-friendly states and limiting the current dependence on the Middle East, the Gulf and Russia. Kazakhstan, which produced 800,000 barrels of oil per day in 2001 and cherishes ambitious hopes of tripling that output over the next decade, is seeking routes to export its crude to Western markets. Mann was speaking to reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Astana. Later on Tuesday, he was due to fly on to former Soviet Georgia to talk to sponsors of the Baku-Ceyhan project. Last November, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s $2.5-billion pipeline, which runs from western Kazakhstan to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, was officially opened. Mann had earlier made clear that the Baku-Ceyhan and the CPC are complementary. «I think between the CPC pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi (Georgia)-Ceyhan pipeline we are going to have sufficient methods to transport Kazakhstan’s oil for the foreseeable future,» Mann told the briefing. The Caspian envoy added that the USA wanted to deepen energy cooperation with Kazakhstan and intended to further assist American investment in the Kazakh economy. «We want to bring new technology into Kazakhstan.» – On Panamax in Far East, Pan Ocean has fixed M/V «Maria Bottiglieri» 75,460 dwt, built 1995, delivery Japan end March, redelivery Far East at USD 7,500 daily.
