Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline

BP's Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline came onstream on May 27 2006, $1 billion over cost and 18 months late. The pipeline stretches from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and is designed to pump a million barrels of oil every day for the next 40 years, fuelling climate chaos.

Construction of BTC has severely disrupted the environment and local lives for the last 3 years, yet this is only the beginning. Communities living along the pipeline route must now live with the constant threat of leaks. The pipeline props up authoritarianism in Azerbaijan, has rendered numerous Georgian homes uninhabitable and polluted water supplies, and led to intimidation of critics and the Kurdish population by the Turkish state.

Widely recognised to be more of a political project than an economic one, BP demanded "free public money" prior to construction. Despite reports showing that BTC's plans thoroughly failed to meet their own standards, international financial instutions and export credit agencies including the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the British Export Credit Guarantee Department answered this demand. Private banks including Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup and ABN AMRO followed close behind, pumping in an additional $100 million.

PLATFORM has worked as part of the Baku Ceyhan Campaign on this issue since 2001; pressuring institutions, organising demonstrations, raising awareness and supporting affected communities and local civil society. Together with organisations in the affected region and beyond, we have produced monitoring reports, reviews of Environmental Impact Assessments and financial analyses. We are now focusing on supporting local monitoring efforts and holding the banks that provided project finance to account.

Former Soviet Union