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INTERNATIONAL BANKS SET TO PROVIDE FUNDS
FOR AZERBAIJAN'S PIPELINE PROJECT
Text of report in Russian by Russian news agency Interfax
Baku, 23 December: A syndicate of international commercial
banks is to
provide 1.2bn dollars for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline
project, the
press service of BP Azerbaijan has told Interfax.
The press service said that 15 banks set up a syndicate to
finance the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project. The syndicate was organized by
ABN Amro,
Citygroup, Mizuho and Societe Generale.
The total amount of funds attracted for the project, including
interest
rates, will amount to 2.5bn dollars , with a total project
cost of 3.6bn
dollars.
Direct construction costs will amount to 2.95bn dollars,
of which 30 per
cent will be invested by shareholders and 70 per cent will
be received as
credits. Other expenditures include the acquisition of 10m
barrels of oil
to fill the pipeline (about 250m dollars - Interfax), and
servicing of
credits.
The future pipeline will stretch 1,767 kilometres (443 km
through
Azerbaijan, 248 km through Georgia and 1,076 km through Turkey)
and will
have a capacity of 50m tonnes of oil per annum and will require
1.5m tonnes
of oil to fill it. The cost of the project is estimated at
2.95bn dollars.
It is planned to complete construction work in the fourth
quarter 2004 and
to start to export Azerbaijani oil from the port of Ceyhan
in May 2005.
The participants in the BTC project are: BP (30.1 per cent),
SOCAR (25 per
cent), UNOCAL (8.9 per cent), Statoil (8.71 per cent), TPAO
(6.53 per
cent), ENI (5 per cent), Itochu (3.4 per cent), ConocoPhillips
(2.5 per
cent), INPEX (2.5 per cent), TotalFinaElf (5 per cent), and
Amerada Hess
(2.36 per cent).
Creditors for the project break down into four groups. Firstly
we have
international financial organizations (the European Bank for
Reconstruction
and Development and the International Finance Corporation),
which will
provide their own funds in addition to guarantee for credits
from
commercial banks. The second group includes export-credit
agencies that
will provide guarantees to commercial banks to finance supplies
of
materials and equipment from six economically developed countries
- the US,
Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy and France. The third group
includes 10 to
30 commercial banks and the fourth group includes participants
in the
project - BP, Statoil, Total and ConocoPhillips, which may
pay out a total
of 800m dollars.
Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1512 gmt
23 Dec 03
BBC Mon TCU 241203 gc
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