Georgia: Russia targets key oil pipeline with over 50 missiles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2534767/Georgia-Russia-targets-key-oil-pipeline-with-over-50-missiles.html

Russian jets targeted a key oil pipeline with over 50 missiles in a weekend bombing raid in Georgia that raised fears the conflict will tighten Moscow's stranglehold on Europe's energy supplies.

By Damien McElroy in Rustavi, Georgia
Last Updated: 6:22AM BST 11 Aug 2008

Deep craters pockmark the landscape south of the Georgian capital Tblisi in a Y-shaped pattern straddling the British-operated pipeline.

The attack left two deep holes less than 100 yards either side of a pressure vent on the pipeline. Shrapnel of highly engineered munitions litters the area.

There was no visible damage to the pipeline. Its vulnerability is summed up by a yellow hazard sign next to the vent warning against digging in the area. Anyone venturing on to the site is warned against smoking.

The oil pipeline is a soft target for Russian artilary Photo: AFP / GETTY
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00788/georgia-russian-tan_788734c.jpg


Local police recorded 51 strikes. "I have no doubt they wanted to target the pipeline, there is nothing else here," said Giorgi Abrahamisvili, a policeman who witnessed the attack.

"It was terribly intense, the smell of cordite spread everywhere. I had to abandon my car and hide in a ditch but the jets weren't interested in other targets."

BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports one per cent of the world's oil needs, or one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. A spokesman played down the impact of the strike, pointing out that pumping was suspended last week because of a terrorist attack in Turkey.

"At the moment the pipeline is not running at any capacity, because there was a fire," the spokesman said.

Georgia is a crucial link in a three country energy corridor vital to Western Europe's oil and gas supply. The £2 billion pipeline is the only major conduit for Central Asian resources not under Russian control.

The Kremlin under Vladimir Putin, Russia's former president and now prime minister, used gas exports to Europe as a tool of foreign policy.

Reduced supplies to eastern Europe forced Russia's neighbours to curtail pro-Western ambitions. Western Europe, especially Germany, is dangerously vulnerable to reduced supplies from Russia at times of political tension.

Georgian politicians accused Russia of waging the war, which Moscow has portrayed as an intervention on behalf of beleaguered renegade enclaves, to achieve wider strategic goals.

"They need control of energy routes," the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili said. "They need sea ports. They need transportation infrastructure. And primarily, they want to get rid of us."

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, alluded to the importance of the pipeline as he prepared to travel to Georgia and Russia on a mediation mission. He said: "The strategic nature of this region is a secret for no one."

Attacks beyond the borders of the two disputed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia provoked a mixture of fear and anger among Georgians, who see Russia at war with the country as a whole.

"Churchill should never have helped the Soviet Union," said a local police chief. "I am not a Nazi but Russia is a curse in the world."

:nowarforoil:

Sounds so familiar.... :banghead:

new combat. It was as I figured... puzzle piece to the pipeline supplying the west.

Thanks!!!

Bush is surprised at the new putin asia front!!
How did that happen?
How could anyone just start acting with impunity about their interests?
Ya stupid buggers, that’s the same hubris that got the planet in world war 1.

What we need is a world war.
It will give us worth a fighting for.
Dust won’t settle for a hundred years or more.
Just look at france, it took a century for four.

And, as by alliance, a fated chain of events weighs anchor,
And the arctic ice eclipses the past in passing,
Long the war wages for the right to drill the floor,
With every oil derrick comes a new sacred massing.

Lost forever on an open mooring,
Wandering as if docked between civilisations,
Looking out on different port cities athunder,
Breathalized by the staggering revelation,
It’s the same old song y’all.

And on waking up, each of us, replay the history tape,
Everything we ever lived for, washed away in a flood
And forever more thereafter, we can sing of joy or rape,
Whilst assholes rule the earth and fuck the poor for grub.

Sing jesus saint mary and Buddha Krishna too,
Whatever the lord loves, will be thy choice blood,
And long will Atlantis haunt your dead true,
All latter day godivas will die in the flood.
Bushwhacked and dead all over again,
Humankind’s head and we’re off at zen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/graphics/2008/08/10/sv_animals2.jpg
Oclock in the making
Oclock fills the crime
Now that time’s breaking
It might as well rhyme.

for more information, as well.... I didn't quite understand why some are already
taking sides on this issue but I haven't read enough about it and needed more
facts instead of opinions of pundits and talking heads. I was trying to find maps
of the pipelines last night but got onto something else instead. At any rate, it
seems the fighting has ceased today. We'll see but Russia isn't leaving Georgia
just yet, Putin says. :rolleyes:

"Whilst assholes rule the earth and fuck the poor for grub."

:sad:

For the US to put in their two cents worth about protecting at all costs or whatever, I knew there had to be some type of 'valuable' asset close by or else it wasn't worth their time.

I don't like war, but one can't blame Russia in today's current state of affairs with the US grabbing anything in sight by whatever means necessary.

Just in case you aren't listening. :hi: