Georgia port trade resumes as Russia patrols coast

15 August 2008 11:56  [Source: ICIS news]

By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW (ICIS news)--Activity at Georgian ports was returning to normal on Friday as Russian naval forces continued patrols along the Black Sea coast and the country's top military official denied that Moscow was expanding its military action in the Caucasus state.

"Military action has halted," Russia's deputy chief of general staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn said in televised remarks. "The Russian Navy continued measures to guarantee security of shipping."

A source at Almar Service, a Georgian shipping agent based in the port of Poti, said that the situation at the country’s largest commercial port was stabilising and more vessels were seen entering the port.

 

“The situation in Poti is normalising despite the Russian presence. Russian helicopters continue to fly overhead but we are hopeful that the port will be fully operational soon,” he said. 

There have been no reports of a blockade at Batumi, Georgia's largest oil shipment port at the southern edge of the country's Black Sea coastline.

Despite previous reports of violence in the Poti area, the source was keen to stress that the atmosphere in the port city was calm.

 

“There is no violence and we hope that it will remain that way”, he said.

Senior US envoy Matthew Bryza told Reuters news agency on Thursday that Washington would urgently press Moscow to ensure free access to Georgian ports and the unfettered movement of ships from the country as a measure to secure oil shipments from the region.

A BP spokesman told ICIS news that the oil pipeline from Baku to the Georgian port of Supsa was still closed due to security reasons and that the company had no immediate plans to reopen it. BP resumed flow of gas through its South Caucasus pipeline on Thursday.

Repairs had not yet started on the BTC pipeline, which was shut after an explosion on the Turkish side last week, and it was unclear when operations could restart, said the spokesman.

Nogovitsyn has repeatedly denied reports that Russian aircraft targeted Georgia's oil and gas pipeline facilities, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which pumps 1% of total global oil demand from Azerbaijan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, a neat row of large craters in a field in southern Georgia strongly suggested that Russia dropped bombs near the pipeline.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi on Friday to present President Mikhail Saakashvili with a formal ceasefire agreement.

Hilde Ovrebekk and Dan Horlock contributed to this article
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