http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=303520132564288
or http://tinyurl.com/5dmnng - - - One of the Russian targets in Georgia is a pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian to the West. Georgia was a target of renewed Russian imperialism because it was a democracy, a future NATO member and an energy supplier to the West. Its use would accelerate declining oil prices worldwide and put a serious crimp in Moscow's plans. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, in which British Petroleum is the lead partner, can carry up to a million barrels of oil a day. It runs from Kazakhstan through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey and breaks Russia's stranglehold on supplying energy to Europe. Moscow currently supplies 25% of Europe's energy needs. Another pipeline, the South Caucasus Pipeline, will carry natural gas along the same route. It has a capacity of 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year and is needed to get Turkmenistan's vast natural gas reserves to European customers. Georgian officials claimed that Russian aircraft dropped at least 30 bombs but failed to damage or disable the underground BTC pipeline. "The Russian bear is trying to choke the vital east-west energy arteries in the Caucasus, specifically the BTC oil pipeline and the gas pipeline," says Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation. Adds Clifford Gaddy, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: "We have to assume that the pipelines are a military target of the Russians. If they need to, they will bomb the pipelines." Failing that, if Russia cannot control the pipelines directly or through a new puppet government in Tbilisi, it at least wants to discourage investors from completing the projects. It's the fragile economies of Eastern Europe and the energy-starved European Union that are the most immediate victims of Putin's power grab. Moscow has seized the assets of the once-private oil giant Yukos and cut off oil supplies or abruptly hiked prices to former Eastern Europe client nations that have dared to pursue economic and political policies independent from Russia. - - - Obviously the Russians don't have any problem with trading blood for oil. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
