Georgian Situation Continues the Quest for The Prize of Oil, Money and Power

One of the more important things to understand about Georgia - the small country that recently engaged in a deadly struggle with Russia - is that it is one of the hosts of a relatively new, 1 million barrel per day capacity oil pipeline called Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC). That pipeline was constructed with the active encouragement of the EU and the US starting in the late 1990s despite strenuous objections from Russia.
If you take a look at a map of the pipeline, you will begin to understand the geopolitical importance of the effort to provide a path out of the Caspian Sea region - home to a large oil and gas reservoir - that does not pass through Iran or Russia. Until the BTC was completed, there was no way to move Azeri oil out to the rest of the market without going through Russia. ...