According to this FINANCIAL story, the Georgian conflict with Russia is all about the oil. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which was completed in 2005, carries 1.2 million barrels of crude per day from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. Stretching from Azerbaijan through Georgia, it passes very closely to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
According to Alter Net, the BTC pipeline passes some of the most unsettled areas of the world, including Chechnya and Georgia's two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With this in mind, the Clinton and Bush administrations provided Georgia with hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, making it the leading recipient of U.S. arms and equipment in the former Soviet space.
All of this, needless to say, was viewed in Moscow with immense resentment. Not only was the United States helping to create a new security risk on its southern borders, but, more importantly, was frustrating its drive to secure control over the transportation of Caspian energy to Europe. Ever since Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, Moscow has sought to use its pivotal role in the supply of oil and natural gas to Western Europe and the former Soviet republics as a source both of financial wealth and political advantage. It mainly relies on Russia's own energy resources for this purpose, but also seeks to dominate the delivery of oil and gas from the Caspian states to the West, Aljazeera reports.
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