The Oil Road

by James Marriott

  Meanwhile, the staff officer in Bethesda continued sharing the satellite data. With whom? He probably informed the British Ministry of Defence, one of the USA’s only three geospatial intelligence partners. Yet the emails obtained by Platform show that, despite repeated queries by British government departments, BP continued to describe reports of the Russians targeting its pipelines as ‘fanciful’, ‘erroneous’ and ‘incorrect’, claiming that ‘there was no indication that either BTC or the Western Route were targeted or bombed by the Russians’.8 No indication, that is, apart from the forty-five bomb craters.

  And did the Americans inform the Georgian military, the liaison officers trained by US Marines at Krtsanisi Training Base outside Tbilisi? Maybe the Georgian oil officials at GOGC first learned about the attack from Washington, rather than from local farmers or government officials.

  That same night, Russian military command reviewed the events that had taken place along Baku–Supsa. Russian spy satellites orbiting near their US twins will have trained their cameras onto the route, to assess the level of damage. By 1.30 a.m. Georgia time, the pilots of the TU-22M3 bombers would have returned to Mozdok airbase in Russia’s North Ossetian Republic and been debriefed. Were they reprimanded for missing the pipeline? Or congratulated for the carefully placed near-miss? Once the outcomes of the bombing flight were clear, military planners probably sat down and decided whether or not to make more attempts.

  Irrespective of the exact sequencing, military, civilian and corporate personnel in Washington, London and Moscow all discussed the field of craters near Akhali-Samgori in south-eastern Georgia during those August days. The Georgians themselves were almost certainly the last to find out about the bombing. And when they tried to make a fuss about it by sending out a press release – in the words of Matthew, ‘trying to drag BP in’ – the issue barely registered with the international media, despite Tamuna’s assertions to the contrary. With both BP and Putin saying that nothing had happened, the news outlets were not interested.

  Why did BP keep Baku–Supsa running for so long – nearly five full days – after the bombing? It would seem highly irresponsible to keep open a pipeline pumping 150,000 barrels of oil per day following bombing raids that might have ruptured or weakened it. One would also expect BP to have rushed out to marker 25 km on the morning of 9 August, cordoned off the area and verified that the pipeline had not been damaged. But the GOGC videos indicate no BP presence at all.

  What, then, were the Russians trying to do? It looks as if they did not want to bomb BTC itself. Had they wanted to do so, the planes could easily have struck slightly to the east of Akhali-Samgori, where all three pipelines run in a tight corridor for the first twenty kilometres from the Azeri border. Or they could have targeted the BTC and SCP pumping station at Jandara, easily visible from the air. The Russian military knew that BTC was already out of action following the PKK attack in Turkey. They also knew that striking the flagship pipeline might trigger direct US support for Georgia.

  By bombing Baku–Supsa, Russia demonstrated its ability to take out the country’s oil infrastructure at will, while maintaining deniability and avoiding responsibility for the outcomes – such as cleaning up an oil spill. It could impress on the Georgian population that acting as a ‘transit corridor’ to the West made it a greater target without securing the country additional protection. Whether intended or not, BP’s international cover-up helped Russia’s portrayal of the Georgians as hysterically crying wolf. Like the negotiations over the Host Government Agreements, these events once again show the weakness of Georgia in relation to the company.

  On close inspection, cracks appear in BP’s public downplaying of the events of August 2008. A quote in Horizon contradicts this portrayal. A production technician on Baku–Supsa, Archil Monaselidze, was on duty at pump station number 13 during the conflict, and commented: ‘These were very difficult times. During the conflict, we kept the station lights off so as not to attract attention. I saw military jets fly over, and there were tanks stationed in my village for some time.’9

  So many questions arise from these craters. We are reminded of the remark by Rory Sullivan of Insight Investment that the pipeline was a ‘done deal’. Despite BP’s labours to present BTC as a successfully closed project, it remains a live creature, playing a role in a war of tanks, bombs and perceptions.

  11 WE LIVE IN A CORRIDOR OF VIOLENCE

  გორი (GORI), GEORGIA

  Since achieving independence in 1989, Georgia has undergone a series of often chaotic transformations. The transition from one ideology to another – communism to nationalism – and the near-total collapse of its industrial economy was accompanied by a coup and intense internal conflict. Demands for autonomy in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were met by a rigid insistence on national unity from Tbilisi. Tensions spiralled, leading to war in both regions, each one breaking away and declaring itself an independent republic. A ragtag and newly assembled Georgian National Guard fought against Ossetian and Abkhaz militias, who were backed by Russian soldiers and fighters from the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus. Atrocities were committed on both sides, with many thousands dead and missing.

  The conflicts ground to an uneasy ceasefire, but were followed by the targeting of ethnic Georgians by others in the breakaway republics. When the fighting halted, a mass exodus from the war-torn regions brought several hundred thousand refugees to Tbilisi, where they were crammed into government buildings, hospitals and schools. Hotels in the city centre became vertical refugee camps for over a decade. When we visited the capital in 1998, we saw scores of families living in the dark, cavernous underpasses of Tbilisi’s main train station.

  In the world of international diplomacy, these conflicts of the early 1990s came to be referred to as ‘frozen’. Although there was no resolution, and there remained the constant fear that fighting could erupt again, the ongoing tension did not stop the development of the Oil Road. President Shevardnadze, a determined supporter of the project, was committed to the pipelines passing through Georgia. In 1996, a mere three years after the temporary halt to fighting in South Ossetia, agreement was reached to pass the Baku–Supsa pipeline close to Gori, just twenty kilometres from the ceasefire line. The ‘energy corridor’ passed by, just as it had snaked through Qarabork, only forty kilometres from the frontline of the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

  Negotiations and conflict-resolution processes were supposed to resolve the issues, but those in power on both sides were unwilling to make any concessions. Over time, the possibility of a settlement looked ever more remote, as the construction of the energy pipelines, the possibility of Georgia joining NATO, and a wider deterioration of relations between the West and Russia pulled Georgia increasingly towards the West.1 The issues of the oil wealth in the Caspian Sea and the routing of pipelines exacerbated destabilisation by generating fierce international competition between those attempting to gain a foothold in the region.2 The war of August 2008, and the bomb craters on the pipeline near Akhali-Samgori, took place in the context of this destabilisation.

  Ramazi drives us along Highway 1, west from Tbilisi and up the valley of the Mtkvari River, following the route of the Baku–Batumi Railway as it climbs towards the Suram Pass. The road, set high in the foothills of the Caucasus, gives us a view over the wide dun-coloured vale. Beyond Gori, we take the exit for Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. This narrow route – one lane in each direction – runs north to the South Ossetian heartland, through the Liakhvi Gorge and on to the Roki Tunnel, the sole road connection to North Ossetia and Russia.

  This was the route that Georgian troops took before attacking Ossetian militias in Tskhinvali on the night of 7 August 2008. It is the same stretch of tarmac that they retreated down two days later, abandoning their bombed-out trucks and sustaining many casualties. Shortly afterwards, the road shuddered under the tracks of a column of 1,200 Russian tanks advancing south and threatening to split the territory of Georgia
in half. Many of the fleeing civilians walked through the forests to avoid the troops on the road.

  Seventy-one-year-old Gusein Melanashvili is one of these refugees. Digging the soil outside a tiny white blockhouse just east of the same road, Gusein remembers the last night he saw his village. As the Russian planes began bombing raids on 8 August on Kekhvi, up in the Liakhvi Gorge, he says, ‘We fled with whatever we were holding – nobody had time to pack.’ As he and his family drove down a dirt track, a bomb exploded ahead of them. ‘It shattered the windscreen onto me. My head was bleeding. We abandoned the car. As we ran, we could see the Russian tanks. There were so many, they jammed up the road, all the way from the Roki Tunnel to Tskhinvali.’

  Gusein made it to Tbilisi, where he camped for five months in a makeshift refugee centre at the Institute for the Protection of Flora. Now, having returned to western Georgia, he shares this small cement cube with his wife and two little grandsons. Surrounding us are 500 identical new-built structures in a neat grid. Resting his shovel against the wall, Gusein sits down on his doorstep with his back against the thin plastic door. He teases his three-year-old grandson, pinching his shoulder and making him giggle. Born in Kekhvi in the Liakhvi Gorge, Gusein left briefly to study, then returned to the village to work as a teacher for twenty-six years, and as school principal for another twenty-five – a public servant throughout the Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev years. Now he survives off a handout of 25 lari a month – about £20 – from UNICEF. This financial support is about to end, and he has been promised a one-off payment of 200 lari by the Georgian government.

  But Gusein says that he does not want aid from the US or Europe, and that he does not need this refugee house. He just wants to return to his land, and then will manage on his own. Despite his intense desire to return, Gusein is trying to make the temporary building and plot allotted to his family in this bleak camp more homely. A pickaxe that he was using to split the hard earth lies by his feet. While we speak, Gusein’s friend, also in his seventies, is working the soil with a shovel, clearing stones. Most of the other householders nearby have also begun turning the earth, as spring is arriving fast. Gusein hopes to grow tomatoes, and his friend inspects six smorodina stakes that should become redcurrant bushes.

  They all seem unconcerned by the chill wind that cancels out the heat of the April sun. The sound of the strong blast is exaggerated by vehicles speeding by on the road to Tshkinvali: the monitoring jeeps of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) heading south to Tbilisi for a Saturday in the city, and the armoured cars of the EU driving north to the ceasefire line.

  As he speaks, Gusein emphasises his points, gesturing with his left hand, holding up either one or two of his enormous fingers. His right hand remains clenched in a fist, resting on his thigh.

  Gusein says that he used to teach Georgians, Ossetians and Armenians in his school. Historically, he feels that Georgians and Ossetians did not have a bad relationship. He accuses Russia of laying the foundations for the conflict by encouraging separatists after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he blames the Saakashvili government for the loss of his home. ‘Even I know that nobody can start a war with Russia and win. The state should not have started the war. Now we have lost everything. Now we are beggars, depending on external help.’ He begins wiping his eyes as he talks about his home, unembarrassed to cry in front of his friend. ‘My home was heaven compared to here. When I was living there, I had everything I needed, I was happy. Now I’ve lost everything.’

  We clamber back into the car and head north towards the frontline. Two kilometres along the road, a large OSCE base looms up. Its international flags and white peacekeeping jeeps symbolically proclaim, ‘There shall be no fighting here’ – or at least that somebody in a flak jacket and an armoured vehicle will monitor any fighting that does happen.

  Fifty metres beyond the entrance to the base, the familiar marker posts indicate that the Baku–Supsa pipeline is passing under the road. Running from east to west, the line funnels 150,000 barrels of crude under this tarmac every day.

  This is where the Russian tanks rumbled over the pipeline on 11 August 2008. We have already seen the bomb craters at Akhali-Samgori that indicated a near collision between Russian explosives and BP’s infrastructure. Here on the road to Tskhinvali, the tanks passed over the pipeline. They stayed for a fortnight, before withdrawing to where they are now: only a few kilometres further north from here.

  Two men have parked a battered blue Ford in a deep puddle by the side of the road, where a stream has overflown its banks next to the pipeline marker. They use the water as a makeshift car wash, scrubbing their vehicle clean, as $5 million worth of crude passes beneath their feet.

  There are many obstacles between Gusein’s refugee house and his home in Liakhvi Gorge: military checkpoints run by Russians, Georgians and Ossetians; the OSCE and EU monitors; and running beneath them, BP’s pipeline.

  BTC KP 484– 671 KM – კრწანისი (KRTSANISI), GEORGIA

  The following day Manana takes us to meet another family displaced by war: ethnic Georgians who had fled from the fighting in Abkhazia in 1993. Driving over the steep ridge separating Tbilisi from the south, we leave the apartment blocks of the city behind us. The landscape turns to pasture and gentle hills. We are heading to Krtsanisi, whose villagers repeatedly made headline news when they opposed the building of BTC by blocking roads and construction sites.

  Approaching the village, we pass through a small pine forest in which low buildings are laid out, connected by gravel paths. It looks like a quiet university campus in the woods, with students strolling between departments. Yet these students are wearing camouflage, and the proliferation of semi-automatic rifles disturbs the image of academic seclusion. This is the Georgian National Military Academy.

  It is also the primary US military installation in the Caucasus. The presence of Western soldiers here was the outcome of presidents Shevardnadze and Saakashvili’s efforts to move Georgia into the US geostrategic orbit. Alongside lobbying to join NATO, both men supported the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, opening up Georgian airspace and bases to assist the US missions. Georgian forces were sent to Kabul and to Baghdad. In return, the US European Command embarked on an ambitious support programme for its new ally in the region. They constructed a training base, a weapons range and an ammunition depot here at Krtsanisi, as well as radar bases near the oil ports of Batumi and Supsa on the Black Sea. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, visited this base in the woods in 2003 to inspect Special Forces training Georgian soldiers in counter-insurgency combat.

  The previous year, the first contingent of US troops had arrived in Tbilisi. According to the US Army, the ‘Georgia Train and Equip Program’ was a 150-strong troop force which would assist the Georgian Army in ‘ground combat skills, marksmanship and urban operations related to service in Iraq’3 – skills that would presumably also be useful in fighting Abkhaz and Ossetian militias. Asked about the deployment, a BP spokeswoman replied that ‘the pipelines will of course benefit from the military presence’.4 Three months after the troops arrived, the BTC company, responsible for the pipeline’s construction, was formally established. When Saakashvili came to power following the Rose Revolution, the engagement with US forces only increased. Soon this was one of the USA’s largest in-country training programmes in the world. Meanwhile, in an echo of developments in Baku, the Georgian military budget grew more than a hundredfold between 2001 and 2008, reaching levels of 25 per cent of the national budget.5

  Despite this military buildup, the Georgian Army was routed in the five-day South Ossetian War of August 2008. The army’s fortunes were not helped by the fact that 2,000 of the nation’s finest troops were out of the country, stationed in Baghdad. The US Air Force dutifully air-dropped them back to their barracks in Georgia, but not before the fighting around Gori had stopped.

  Leaving the US base behind, we drive through a dusty valley strewn with plastic
bags. As Krtsanisi village appears in front of us, we spot the markers of BTC and SCP on our left. For the past twenty kilometres these two pipelines have run on a path quite separate from Baku–Supsa, which swings north of Tbilisi. From now on our journey will follow BTC as it heads for the Turkish coast at Ceyhan. At Krtsanisi the marker posts show the two lines climbing up the hill, heading straight for the village. As we approach, we see marker 484 km within twenty-five metres of the buildings. The pipes run under the land between the houses and the local school.

  This four-street village has only about a hundred homes. Each is set in its own fenced-in plot of land, used for cattle-grazing or dotted with fruit bushes. The paths between the houses are unpaved. Today they are dry and dusty, but when it rains they must turn to mud. There are few people outside.

  A man in his fifties, wearing slippers, joins us on the path in front of his house. He explains that the pipelines are bad for Krtsanisi: ‘How can they not be? They run though the village.’ Petitions had been made before the construction period, demanding resettlement for the whole community. BP refused, saying the villagers would be safe, but the man questions whether this is possible when the pipelines run so close to people’s homes. Although willing to share these thoughts, he is not particularly forthcoming. His neighbours are even less open to speaking. Whether this reflects a suspicion of outsiders or a fear of the consequences of talking to them is unclear.

  After walking through the village, Manana brings us to the home of the Pangani family. A woman in her thirties, talkative and extrovert, invites us into her front yard. Bright quilts hang from the second-floor veranda, airing in the sunlight. Her husband, a large man in a pale tracksuit, is casting seed to a flock of grey and speckled hens with thick feathery legs. Introducing herself as Pikria, she seats us on a bench in a strip of shade, and starts talking. Manana translates for us.