One from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, a Turkish port, could be expanded but with difficulty.
Russia, of course, has a different view and is publicly critical of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.
Seventy-five miles from Bina Bawi runs Iraq's biggest export route, the Kirkuk-to-Ceyhan pipeline.
This will be an important step towards aggregating Caspian output and enhancing the viability of the Ceyhan export route.
The Kurdish oil exports will likely be pumped through to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, on the Mediterranean Sea.
Until there's a law, Addax cannot build the pipeline that would probably move oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
The consortium will move much of that oil through the nearly complete BTC pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan to Ceyhan, Turkey.
These developments, plus the likelihood of incentives from regional governments, will ultimately make Baku-Ceyhan the optimal route for Caspian oil exports.
And, if the Ceyhan route cannot be justified, the obvious alternative is to build an extra line to Supsa in Georgia.
They would like to see it flow from Baku, on the coast of Azerbaijan, west to the safe Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Georgia, which has been courting Turkey, seems embarrassed by its apparent windfall, and insists that it shares the general enthusiasm for Ceyhan.
Eni currently holds a stake in the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline project in Turkey.
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Last year, however, a consortium led by BP opened a huge pipeline between Baku, on the Caspian Sea, and the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
This disrupted Azerbaijan's oil exports, already hit by an explosion earlier this month in the Turkish part of the pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan, in Turkey.
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President Aliev, whose regime is growing harsher in the face of rising dissent, would love to make a triumphant announcement that the Ceyhan route was finally assured.
In theory, the Ceyhan line could also be used for oil from the other side of the Caspian, where Chevron and other oil companies have won huge contracts.
C. lawyer who helped write the 1977 law as a Carter Administration official and now serves on a committee that oversees sales generated by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian Sea.
One reason it may not be is timing: the hoped-for oil from Kazakhstan's fields will not start flowing in serious quantities until 2008, but America wants the companies to complete the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline by 2004.
Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, told Elizabeth Jones, America's envoy to the Caspian, last week that the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline would provide an export route for early oil from Kashagan, where production is due to start in 2005.
These include long-term energy security, the viability of shipping large volumes of oil through the Bosporus, and the attractiveness of a large-diameter pipeline to a port like Ceyhan, which is able to handle exports from both sides of the Caspian.
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