The United States will remain active, and we will continue to extend full support to the efforts of the companies and countries to move the project ahead. OPIC stands by the commitment it first made 18 months ago to consider raising its per-project limits for this important undertaking and to provide political risk insurance directly to the U.S. investors, and to the U.S. financial institutions that will lend to project investors. EXIM Bank similarly stands ready to provide support for U.S. exporters in the project. Looking ahead, it remains important to ensure that companies producing oil beyond Azerbaijan, in Kazakhstan and Georgia, for example, have fair opportunity to join BTC as equal partners. The real issue is whether interested parties operating on both sides of the Caspian Sea can work together to generate win-win commercial benefits for companies and shared political and economic benefits for the countries.
Cooperation also is needed to safeguard the Caspian Sea's fragile environment.
We can all agree that environmental conditions in the Caspian are abysmal. Unfortunately, this has been the case since long before international oil companies began drilling the Caspian's offshore fields in the mid-1990's. The source of this environmental degradation reflects 70 years of industrial pollution that has flowed downstream from the Soviet heartland, and over 100 years of environmentally unsound production technologies resulting in untold volumes of oil leaking from wells in and around the Caspian. The good news is that the international oil companies now at work are bringing world-class exploration and production technologies to the Caspian. These companies' internal standards, the concerns of their stockholders, and the covenants applied by lenders will ensure companies maintain the highest possible environmental standards while developing offshore fields.