BBC News Online: World: Asia-Pacific

Caspian pipeline from Kazakhstan opens

An oil pipeline linking Kazakhstan and the Russian Black Sea coast has been officially opened in the southern Russian port city of Novorossiisk.

The pipeline has been financed by a consortium including the American, Russian and Kazakh governments and could provide twenty million tonnes of oil a year by 2002.

American companies have invested more than one billion dollars in the project.

A BBC correspondent says the opening of the pipeline - the first to be completed since the collapse of the Soviet Union - is being seen as a symbol of better relations between Moscow and Washington. The US had been promoting pipelines that avoid Russian territory.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service