-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- LOS ANGELES, March 26 (UPI) -- A U.S.-backed oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan may have to be shelved for economic reasons unless additional crude is found to guarantee a larger, more lucrative daily flow. The proposed $2.5-billion Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline is favored by the United States because it gives western Caspian crude a route to the West that avoids the more volatile regions of Iran and southern Russia. The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday, however, that the basic economics of oil have put the entire project in jeopardy. Experts told the Times that there appears to not be enough crude available in the Caspian to make the project economically feasible, even with world oil prices at 10-year highs. "Higher prices definitely make development of the Caspian look better, but there probably isn't enough oil now to justify this pipeline," Julia Nanay, director of Petroleum Finance Co., told the Times. Energy experts told the newspaper that 6 billion barrels of crude reserves are needed for the pipeline to work, but only 4 billion are currently available and there are no obvious sources of additional developed reserves on the horizon. "You have got to have enough oil to put through the pipeline, and there just isn't enough there," said Robert Ebel, an energy expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline -- backed by the White House -- is being developed by an 11-member consortium headed by BP Amoco, which has sunk $12 billion into developing Azerbaijan's offshore oil reserves in the Caspian. The Times said BP Amoco at first resisted the Baku-to-Ceyhan route in favor of the shorter proposed routes -- through Georgia to the Black Sea port of Supsa, or south across Iran to the Persian Gulf. The Caspian region has estimated crude reserves of 35 billion barrels, about the size of the North Sea, plus prodigious natural gas supplies. Transporting the oil to the Mediterranean seaport of Ceyhan would make it less likely that political turmoil in Russia or Iran would cut the precious flow of oil, and would also bolster the fledgling governments of Azerbaijan and other Caspian republics by giving their petroleum resources an outlet to the world that didn't depend on Russia or Iran. Turkey, a NATO member and long-time U.S. ally, has been actively lobbying to be the transit route for the Caspian's oil and natural gas. The Ceyhan route, however, is much longer so the transportation costs per barrel of oil will be higher than if the pipeline were shorter. The Times said the Caspian consortium believes the crude shortfall is, in part, caused by the difficulty of exploring the relatively uninhabited Caspian region. The oil companies have been looking into adding crude from the eastern Caspian to the pipeline flow, but have also said Washington should consider subsidies for the pipeline until enough reserves are developed to make it pay for itself. Some analysts told the Times that the Clinton administration has ignored ,<== the hard realities of pipeline economics in favor of one stressing security <== matters that don't greatly effect the United States. <== "The State Department is looking at the large geopolitical picture," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. "They have worked themselves into a frenzy by justifying the East-West route." -- Copyright 2000 by United Press International. 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