Tehran offered to pay the companies back by exporting oil from southern Iranian fields on their behalf. But those overtures are strongly opposed by Washington, which restricts American companies from doing energy business with Iran. Georgia also hopes to secure substantial transit fees. The consortium developing Azeri offshore fields is reported to be leaning toward an early pipeline from Baku to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa. If Ankara has its way, oil reaching Georgia will continue on by pipeline to Turkey's southeastern port of Ceyhan, on the Mediterranean.
Turkey initially is likely to waive most transit tariffs.
Four European states on the Black Sea also are separately pushing their own transit routes. They want to take oil delivered across the Black Sea by tanker from Russian or Georgian ports and forward it on to markets in Western Europe. Romania hosted a conference in September to lobby oil companies to consider shipping Caspian oil to its port of Constanta, then up the Danube and Rhine into Germany. Ukraine has proposed receiving oil in Odessa, then feeding it into the Druzhba pipeline network which for decades has carried Russian oil and gas westward. Bulgaria and Moldova have proposed similar feed-in projects.