Balkanalysis.com

11/01/2006: AMBO Pipeline Route Delineated in Albania and Macedonia

11/01/2006: AMBO Pipeline Route Delineated in Albania and Macedonia

(Balkanalysis.com Security & Intelligence Brief 15) The final route for the proposed AMBO (Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria) oil pipeline has been decided by the first two countries, and codified in a bilateral protocol of October 30, Skopje’s Makfax reported.

The anticipated route of the pipeline, which will begin in Burgas on the Black Sea and terminate in the southern Albanian port of Vlore, seems to have been settled. While it has not identified its own exit point yet, Bulgaria has recently stated that it will do so in the near future, so that a second bilateral agreement between it and Macedonia can be signed. However, considering that Macedonia’s preferred pipeline entry point is said to be in the area of Deve Bair, named after an eponymous 1,182 meter-high mountain in the northwest corner of the country, it is likely that the Bulgarian exit point will be near the village of Prekolnica or, more likely, Guesevo, situated on the international highway route that connects Sofia and Skopje.

On the other end of Macedonia, the government has made the interesting choice of the village of Lakavica for the exit point of the pipeline, connecting with the village of Stebleve on the Albanian side.

The pipeline will thus have to cross the River Crn Drim, which flows in a northern direction up from Lake Ohrid to Lake Debar. The also means that the pipeline will skirt just to the north of villages such as Labunista, Podgorci and Jablanica, where various intelligence services have located foreign-funded Islamic fundamentalist groups, who have summer quarters in the rugged mountains to the west. How this will affect the security situation and rewrite the ‘map’ of Islamist activities in the country is an unknown but interesting factor to look out for.

The AMBO pipeline has been slowed down for various reasons. The previous Macedonian government faced obstructionism from Albanian ministers appointed by the then-empowered DUI party, who wanted to redraw the chosen pipeline route to pass through Tetovo and Gostivar, and thus pass under their sphere of control- a potentially important bargaining chip in any future ethnic politics or renewed paramilitary activities.

However, the AMBO backers held out for the chosen route, passing straight towards Skopje and then down through central and southern Macedonia. If the pipeline is built and, at the same time suspected oil deposits in eastern Macedonia are tapped, it will go a long way towards restoring economic parity to the country as a whole. Eastern Macedonia has historically been poorer and suffered higher unemployment than Albanian-majority western Macedonia, with its heavy remittances from the diaspora and considerable international donor attention.

As was the case with the BTC Pipeline in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, concerns over environmental safeguards and property compensation for those affected by the pipeline will be other interesting factors to watch out for.