“As far as BTC is concerned, nothing has changed. We are not taking part,” Alekperov told reporters. “In the future oil will be exported via three routes: the Baku-Tbilis-Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa, and Baku-Novorossisk pipelines, and we hope there will be room for our oil in one of those. On the Caspian, we want to concentrate our financial and intellectual resources on projects where Lukoil is the operator.” When completed in 2005, the 1790-km long, 42-in, pipeline will ship crude oil from Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea, via Georgia to a marine terminal at the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The project is strongly backed by Washington, which favours it over alternative export routes through Iran and Russia, but officials in Moscow have dismissed it as a commercial white elephant. Alekperov also said work on Azerbaijan’s onshore Govsany-Zykh field, where Lukoil is a 50% shareholder and operator, was being held up because of “ecological and technical problems.”