Oil pipeline in Georgia

While European leaders were focused on resolving the Greek crisis over the weekend, Russian troops were installing the new signs, pushing their self-declared border several hundred metres deeper into Georgian territory.

The Baku-Supsa pipeline carries up to 145,000 barrels of oil a day from Azerbaijan’s Caspian oil fields to Georgia’s Supsa terminal on the Black Sea. Its strategic importance was made clear just before the 2008 war, when BP had to use it to re-route oil to western markets after its larger BTC pipeline across Georgia was closed by an explosion.