As growing concerns about dwindling global reserves help maintain oil prices close to the $50 a barrel mark, a major supply route linking newly developed oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea with western markets is due to be opened. The pipeline is expected to spark an economic boom in BakuWithin the next few weeks, oil from the Caspian will start flowing into a 1,762 kilometres long pipeline. The pipeline will run from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, via near Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and across eastern Turkey to the port of Ceyhan, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is being built by a consortium of companies led by energy giant BP. The project, costing an estimated $3.6bn (£1.9bn), is described by BP as the world's biggest energy scheme. "Building work is generally progressing on schedule," says a BP spokesperson in Baku. "We expect to be loading tankers in Ceyhan with Caspian crude before the end of the year."
The pipeline project is highly controversial. Governments involved have welcomed the project. "The whole region needs this pipeline," says Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan's president.
However, from long before work started on the pipeline in early 2003, concerns were raised about running it through such a volatile political region. In Azerbaijan, the pipeline goes close to the ceasefire line separating the forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia, its neighbour and bitter enemy to the west. The two countries are locked in a bloody territorial dispute and, despite the ceasefire, clashes often occur.
Elsewhere en-route, concern has been raised about the pipeline's vulnerability to attack from anti government groups. Georgia battles various separatist conflicts, while in Turkey the pipeline skirts the heartlands of Kurdish areas. "We have secured the pipeline to the highest standards," insists Tamam Bayatly, BP's communications manager in Baku.
Non-governmental organisations have complained.
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"I cannot say that there are not any problems," says Faig Askerov, who monitors the environmental impact of the project for BP. "We use technology that makes the minimum impact on the environment. We are not ideal, but we're good."
Western governments and financial institutions have given strong backing to the project. The United States has given significant political support, seeing the pipeline as a way of transporting vital energy supplies out of the Caspian, avoiding alternative routes to the south through Iran, or to the north through Russia.
But Russia has been unhappy with the project, seeing it as further evidence of the West seeking to exert power and influence in an area Moscow has traditionally seen as its own backyard.