A CAREFULLY STAGED ATTACK

On the night of 5 August, an explosion occurred at pump station No 30 in Refahiyye in the Turkish province of Erzincan, suspending the operation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Not only did the resulting fire, which destroyed hundreds of tonnes of Azerbaijani oil, cause a hike in world oil prices, it also caused heated debates on the effectiveness of the Turkish government's protection of regional energy projects. The organizers of the BTC pipeline project initially pondered the security of the 1,774 km pipeline, taking account of the fact that members of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party operate in the south-eastern and southern provinces of Turkey.

According to an inter-governmental agreement the consequences of terrorist attacks are not liable to joint elimination by members of the consortium, which means that responsibility for making up the damage lies with Turkey. As a result of the terrorist attack, daily losses from BTC downtime reach at least 350,000 dollars. Further, the area where the explosion occurred did not have a foam fire fighting system, which is why total restoration of the pipeline may take several months. As a result, BTC representatives had no choice but to wait for the oil between the 29th and 31st valves to burn out.

The flames and dense black smoke rose to a height of several dozen metres. Even the fact that the fire stations of 10 Turkish cities near the pipeline are responsible for putting out fires on the pipeline did not help extinguish the fire quickly. Fire detachments were reinforced in the cities of Ardahan, Kars, Erzurum, Erzincan, Sivas and Adana. As was expected, all attempts to put out the fire met with failure. It is well known that the most effective way to extinguish burning oil is to use foam but, for some reason, it had to be delivered to the site of the terrorist attack from the capital Ankara, i.e. hundreds of kilometres away.

At the same time, gas supplies to the adjacent gas pipeline were also suspended, which has caused further losses.

Turkish experts admit that if the fire has destroyed the electronic system inside the pipeline, repair work may take a long time. When Ankara confirmed the experts' fears, oil prices on the world market soared by 1.6 per cent. No-one believes the assurances of Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Hilmi Guler that, "the issue of financial loss to Ankara is not relevant". Experts also say that if the damaged valves are not replaced, the production and installation of new ones will take up to six months. However, Ankara representatives said that they had spare valves.

Meanwhile, oil remaining at the Ceyhan terminal was loaded into tankers, while oil production at the Azari-Ciraq-Gunasli deposits was reduced. It must be noted that it is Azerbaijan, not Turkey, which has sustained the greatest damage from the explosion. It is impossible to suspend oil extraction from the platform which fills the pipeline. A decision was made to dispatch oil by an alternative route - the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, which entails costs into the millions. The terrorists achieved their goal - the region sustained enormous economic damage.

Moreover, the Turkish press openly declared that the explosion in Erzincan was not simply a terrorist attack, but "an act of energy sabotage" against Turkey and that one of the world's powers was behind this explosion.

Journalists drew this conclusion after they learned that station No 30 is the central to the chain of pumping stations in northern Turkey. Only a narrow circle of people knew the exact coordinates of the pump's location. This means that the most sensitive point of the oil pipeline was chosen in advance.

In this way, the terrorists tried to give some countries reason to doubt that pumping oil through this pipeline is safe and to divert their attention to other routes. The explosion was also a blow to Turkey's image as a reliable and profitable route that could be used in new projects in the future.

Moreover, the terrorist attack on BTC was committed at a time when world oil prices had gone into decline and ahead of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad's visit to Turkey. Ahmadinezhad was planning to sign a number of important energy agreements in Ankara.

Analysts wonder how it was that the "whole army" of BTC security failed to stop the terrorists. Preparations for the explosion did not take just one hour. In order to counter terrorist attacks and sabotage on the longest Turkish section of BTC, 13 fully equipped security points were set up, permanently manned by 300 soldiers.

Moreover, along the whole Turkish sector of BTC, there are 57 gendarmerie stations with 1,500 members of staff. Soldiers and gendarmes carry out daily patrols along the pipeline, while a special plane makes control flights twice a month, carrying out an aerial survey of the pipeline to discover deformations.

The photographs are studied in detail, and the slightest changes are monitored in order to uncover any possible preparations for sabotage or illegal oil pumping. However, Botas International Limited believed these measures to be insufficient, setting up cavalry units and placing 12 undercover agents in population centres along the pipeline.

The abundance of pumping stations on BTC is, to some extent, related to the terrorist threat. Representatives of the Turkish authorities said that it was stipulated in the very construction of the pipeline that, in the event of a terrorist attack, the maximum loss of oil should be 50,000 barrels.

As we can see, all these protective measures on one of the world's most modern pipelines failed to prevent a terrorist attack. It seems that Turkey's hopes to make a profit of $12 billion over the 40 years of BTC operation will be dampened by terrorists, while its image as "an energy corridor" between the East and the West will hardly stand the test of time.