TBILISI, Jan. 9 -- Georgian officials and Chevron representatives said Wednesday the U.S. oil giant is planning to invest in a project to repair a pipeline to transport Caspian Sea oil across Georgia and out to the West. Gia Chanturia, president of Georgia's national oil company, announced on state radio that Chevron had affirmed it will invest in the pipeline and other projects, including the construction of an oil terminal at Poti on the Black Sea. The announcement followed meetings between Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and Chevron executives who were in the former Soviet republic for three days of talks and inspections of the oil infrastructure. Chevron Overseas Petroleum Corp. President Robert Matzke told journalists the company was also interested in developing Georgian oil fields and refineries, but did not say how much money was at stake or when a contract could be signed. Matzke said Chevron's confidence in the restive Caucasus mountain nation was rising and potential for cooperation was high due to the country's strategic position and recent economic reforms. He said the main goal of his visit was to study the full range of Georgian investment opportunities and to determine the condition of Georgia's infrastructure. If repaired, the currently idle pipeline linking the Azerbaijani capital of Baku with the Georgian port of Batumi on the Black Sea would serve as an alternative to a Russian pipeline that is also slated to bring early oil drilled by a mostly Western consortium from Azerbaijan to global markets. U.S President Bill Clinton has pushed an alternate route through Georgia, an attempt to reduce Russia's control over the flow of Caspian crude and help Georgia resist Moscow's attempts to exercise its influence in the region.
Matzke said the pipeline would also serve to transport oil to market from Kazakhstan's huge Tengiz oil field, located on the eastern shore of the Caspian. Chevron signed a $20 billion deal to develop the Tengiz field in 1992, but has had to scale back investment and output because of Russian domination of the pipeline network that connects oil fields in the former Soviet republics to the rest of the world. The Georgian economy collapsed during the civil war and chaos that followed the Soviet breakup, but has slowly begun to improve under Shevardnadze, who won support for his policies of political stability and economic reforms in the presidential election last November.
