A controversial scheme led by the oil giant BP to build a huge, strategically important pipeline is about to win crucial backing, according to a leaked document.
The World Bank is due to approve a $250-million loan this week for a consortium to build an underground pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan via Georgia.
British-based opponents of the scheme claim that the 1 600km-long pipeline will cause environmental damage, increase ethnic tensions and accelerate global warming.
The pipeline is supported by the United States government as an important route for reducing its dependence on oil from the troubled Middle East.
It also keeps large quantities of oil out of the hands of the Russians, who have supported an alternative pipeline to their port of Novorossiysk.
According to the leaked document, officials at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) — an arm of the World Bank —have recommended to their board that the loan be approved, as it is ”critical to the financing plan”. The final decision will be taken by the IFC board, made up of representatives from governments around the world.
The document states that one of the project’s benefits is that it ”represents a major opportunity to translate oil revenues into poverty reduction”.
It also argues that the project has been carried out ”in accordance with environmental and social safeguards and policies”.
But a spokesperson for one of the groups opposing the scheme says: ”The report fails to mention that [Kurdistan Workers’ party] guerrillas in Turkey have …. named pipelines as a future target.
”Surely the board should know there is a good chance their investment will go up in smoke?” — Â