So-called patriots are also supporting the idea of reversing the Odesa-Brody oil pipeline
Liubomyr Buniak, former manager of the Druzhba Oil Pipeline and current mayor of Lviv, has suddenly supported using the Odesa-Brody oil pipeline in the reverse mode, which means the pipeline, instead of delivering Caspian oil to Europe, will be functioning in the opposite direction, transporting Russian oil to the Black Sea. He believes it is advisable to do so at least while the problem of pumping oil in the right direction remains unsolved. “The pipeline will lie idle for another three or four years, so I don’t think reversing is a bad idea,” Mr. Buniak said Wednesday at a Kyiv press conference.
This statement sounds more than strange from the mouth of a person considered to be the main builder of this project strategically important for Ukraine and Europe as a whole. It seemed that he was most keenly interested in using the pipe in the planned direction and opposed the protocol signed by Naftohaz Ukrayiny and Russian companies on April 23 in Moscow to the effect that the Russian export oil will be pumped across the territory of Ukraine through the reverse-directed Odesa-Brody pipeline and then shipped from Port Pivdenny.
Yet, by all accounts, this is not so strange after all. This is not the first time Mr. Buniak has first spoken or even made decisions and only then start to think. This is exactly the way the pipeline was built. It is an open secret that, as the construction began, this country was in dire financial straits, with a huge budget deficit. Mr. Buniak was asked whether everything had been calculated and whether Ukraine would benefit from the pipeline. Later, when the construction was in full swing, Buniak did not heed advice to think over the sources of oil for the pipeline.
At the time, some media outlets portrayed him as the only strategist and lobbyist of the European oil transport corridor project and cultivated myths that he financed the Odesa-Brody pipeline almost from his own pocket. (Incidentally, many are asking now if the “patriotic” veneer of the construction helped somebody evade paying their taxes.) It will be recalled that when the pipeline finally assumed a clear shape, having eaten up a handsome amount (about $500 million) of budget money, it was suggested that some oil producers be invited to establish an international consortium to fill the pipe with this quite scarce primary commodity. Even at that time, the public was aware that otherwise it was impossible to breath life into the half-billion-dollar project and that the enormous funds spent would go down the drain if Ukraine continued to pursue an isolationist policy in this respect ( The Day has repeatedly written that certain forces, which later formed Our Ukraine, sabotaged the National Security and Defense Council decisions and the presidential decrees to this effect.)
No pen can describe the ensuing righteous anger of the “patriots” who gained ground in the government of and rallied around Viktor Yushchenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko! They indiscriminately dished out labels of traitors to the national interests and argue against realistic pipeline commissioning deadlines that seemed quite reasonable (Yushchenko promised as early as March 2001, “12 million tons of oil this year is the pipeline’s commercial premiere.”) Mr. Buniak, too, was in the fray, repeatedly scourging his opponents in the press. However, time has shown that the isolationists were wrong. Although built, the oil pipeline and the oil port are still not on the list of effective enterprises. With two years gone, the port works only partially, as does just a 52-km segment of the pipeline, — not in the projected direction but to ship the Russian oil that goes across the Bosphorus.
And what about our knight of pipeline isolationism, who has always positioned himself as a staunch national democrat standing guard (with his “purse”) over the national idea (as interpreted by Yushchenko and Tymoshenko)? Most probably, being aware of his inability to cope with the office of national commissioner for the European oil transportation corridor and reluctant to be held responsible for the likely fiasco of this project, he decided to bow out of it and became mayor of Lviv — with active political and other support of Ms. Tymoshenko, “the only man” in the Yushchenko government, and Mr. Yushchenko himself, however, declined to join the fray.
However, Mr. Buniak has made hardly any headway in the his office. For example, Lviv, the city he heads, runs the risk of having hot water cut off as early as July because of its extremely low level of gas payments. In the first ten days of June alone, the percentage of the city residents who had paid for hot water dropped to a disastrous 15%. The heat-supplying enterprises have been running up a UAH 7.6-million debt to gas suppliers since the beginning of the year, with payments still declining. Naftohaz Ukrayiny has warned the city’s public utilities that if they did not clear the arrears, no gas will be delivered this coming winter.
At first glance, the Lviv mayor is up to his eyeballs in troubles. Yet, he suddenly decided to broach the old pipeline issue and plunge into the dispute between those who advocate the projected direction of oil supplies to Europe and those who favor the reverse mode, taking advantage of the difficulties once created by the isolationists.
Interestingly enough, Mr. Buniak claims the pipeline was originally designed for both modes of operation. Does it mean that while the “Lviv flower bed” activists were craving for the serene image of builders of a Ukrainian oil pipeline intended to save Ukraine from Russia’s oil monopoly, this “patriot” was in fact building the pipe precisely for Russian oil? In any case, he testifies against himself in these statements.
Unfortunately, it is not ruled out that we will all have to pay for this. On May 28, addressing the Kyiv conference on energy security, US ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, cautioned Ukrainian politicians against such actions, “Every time Ukraine flirts with a new proposal to reverse the pipeline and proceed with Brody-Odesa, Ukraine hurts itself. The global market must believe that Ukraine is a reliable partner, that it has strategic vision, and that it will stick with this strategic vision. Moreover, if Ukraine implements Brody-Odesa, it will only put more oil into the Black Sea and accelerate the implementation of a competitive bypass route that would make Odesa-Brody obsolete.”
Another version is also possible: having lost the confidence of his voters, Buniak has not only “betrayed his principles” but had to play up to Naftohaz Ukrayiny, a supporter of the Russia-bound oil pumping, out of elementary crowd- pleasing considerations, i.e., in the hope that the company will ease its gas sanctions against the city headed by a patriotic mayor. Well, as the saying goes, there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip. But the point is actually not Buniak. The pipeline story, which we hope will soon receive a powerful impulse and the right outcome, teaches all of us to obey the rules of the market game which, like chess, obliges one to think several moves ahead, not the other way round.
