CASPIAN ENERGY….

Presidents Haidar Aliev of Azerbaijan and Ahmet Necdet Sezer of Turkey signed agreements on the construction of a 700-mile pipeline from the Caspian offshore Shah-Deniz gas field across Azerbaijan and Georgia to Erzurum in Turkey. Part of the line would parallel the proposed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. BP-Amoco and Norway’s Statoil head the Shah-Deniz consortium, which is responsible for the first 500 miles of the line, estimated to cost about $800 million. That is on top of the $4 billion needed to develop the “super-giant” gas field over the next twenty years.