All posts tagged: contract of the century

Happy Oil Workers’ Day!

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Today commemorates 17 years since the signing of the “Contract of the Century” to build the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline to deliver offshore Caspian crude from the oil fields of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli. On this day in 1994, the agreement was signed between the government of Azerbaijan and major oil companies Amoco, BP, McDermott, Unocal, Lukoil, Statoil, Exxon, TPAO, Pennzoil, Itochu, Ramco, Delta and SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic). The BTC pipeline has the capacity to bring one million barrels of Azeri oil a day to Western markets. Last year, I first came to Azerbaijan and the region to follow and photograph socioeconomic developments along the pipeline route with a Young Explorers Grant from the National Geographic Society. The work I produced was published, “At Five Years Old: BTC Pipeline Moves Oil, Culture,” and I hope to return to the region to following the route this winter. I will soon be launching on October 1 a crowdsourcing campaign to accomplish this goal on the photojournalists’ fundraising platform Emphas.Is, where I hope to raise …

Young Explorers’ Grant Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline Photo Essay Published On National Geographic Website

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Pictures: At Five Years Old, BTC Pipeline Moves Oil, Culture National Geographic June 10, 2011 A New World Unveiled Photograph by Amanda Rivkin The landlocked Asian nation of Azerbaijan forged a powerful connection to the West five years ago with the first delivery of oil through one of the most ambitious energy projects of a generation—a $4.2 billion, 1,100-mile (1,800-kilometer) pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. When the deal was originally struck in 1994 for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline, the late Azerbaijan President Heydar Aliyev called it “the Contract of the Century”—the first time a former Soviet state had signed a deal for its oil to reach international markets without going through Russia. It was also hailed as a major policy success for the United States, which had engaged in years of intensive diplomacy to build an avenue for Caspian oil wealth that did not rely on Moscow. (Related: BP’s map of the pipeline route) The BTC has the capacity to deliver 1.2 million barrels of oil per day to the Turkish port of Ceyhan …