Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski is certain the best way to solve the problem with the oil pipe line Odesa-Brody-Gdansk is to form an international consortium in which Poland is ready to participate. Ukraine is to have its say. Azerbaijan is to provide the oil.
A new Ukrainian-Polish summit this time took place in Odesa, through which the oil transit route from the Caspian Sea to European countries might pass. “Today not only Ukraine and Poland are concerned with the issue of energy supplies, but all of Europe as well,” President Leonid Kuchma stated on the occasion.
Pres. Kwasniewski confirmed that Europe was trying to find new routes to deliver energy resources, Interfax-Ukraine reports. But for all that, “Ukraine must not be removed from the settlement of these issues.” The issue of constructing those very gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine, as Russia had proposed to the West, also was on the agenda. Kwasniewski in Odesa as recently in Warsaw during the meeting with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Zlenko, was not saying that his country is resolutely against construction of these pipelines. But, according to him, “The twenty-first century must differ from the twentieth century in that pipelines must serve everybody and not be used by some again others,” Poland’s official PAP Agency (www.dziennik.pap.com.pl) states. This is how, Kwasniewski believes, the philosophy of the twenty-first century must be. Warsaw, like Kyiv, actively supports depoliticizing the pipeline. Bratislava also proposes to evaluate the situation exclusively from the economic point of view.
The presence in Odesa of a Polish business delegation that together with the presidents visited construction of Pivdenny (Southern) Oil Terminal near Odesa means, in the opinion of the Polish president, that the search for a form in which Poles can participate in the Odesa-Brody- Gdansk project is underway. The project itself, Kwasniewski thinks, could become a considerable addition to the already existent lines of delivering energy resources to Europe. Thus there are no doubts in Poland concerning the need to build the pipeline, while Ukraine’s attitudes toward the issue are not so clearly defined. And not only in Ukraine, for recently representatives of Kazakhstan that is using Russian city of Novorossiisk to export its oil expressed their doubts on the expediency of the project. And the big Azerbaijan oil that the Odesa- Brody-Gdansk is counting on for the time being simply does not exist.
On the other hand, other countries have shown interest in this project: a year ago Hungary declared it, and recently Slovakia expressed its concern about the issue as well.
Thus, the strategic partnership that had been so long talked about and the intensification of which both presidents declared in Odesa, undergoes a test by pipes that is far from being just hot air. Currently the positions of Warsaw and Kyiv look quite close, and Moscow will have to take this into consideration. However, one can obviously expect more clarity only in case that the international conference proposed by Poland with the participation of countries concerned, that is Russia, the European Union, Poland, Ukraine, possibly Slovakia, Hungary and others, will take place. Then it will become clearer whether one can reckon on international support of the Odesa-Brody-Gdansk project, which within the context of the diversification of energy resources supplies would seem impossible to depoliticize.
