This year July, the Ukrainian prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko made efforts to stop what she called the shadowy privatization of the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline (OBP), from Ukraine’s Black Sea coast to country’s border with Poland, based on the fact that corruption and political problems in Ukraine are to choke off the expansion of oil exports from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to Europe. Her promise at a July 30 press conference to halt the “shadowy privatization of the oil pipeline through offshore companies†was referred to the British Virgin Islands company Milbert Ventures, which is linked to the Pryvat Group headquartered in the Ukraine city of Dnipropetrovsk, and headed by Ukrainian tycoon Ihor Kolomoysky.
The contracts with these companies were prepared by the office of Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko. Now Tymoshenko alleges that these contracts would give to the BVI company the authority to decide unilaterally on the direction of the oil running through the pipeline, and to extend the term of the contract, while not providing any guarantee that oil would ever actually fill the pipeline in any direction.
By words of Tymoshenko, these attempts to register Odessa-Brody pipeline in offshore zones like BVI, sell technical oil that goes through this pipeline, and leave Ukraine with nothing are to fail. In her opinion, this is the corruption scheme that would have given the Odessa-Brody pipeline over to Pryvat Group via Milbert Ventures, for closing it down after making it empty.
Bohdan Sokolovsky, Yuschenko’s representative for international energy affairs, contests the allegation, identifying two refineries in western Ukraine controlled by BVI-linked Pryvat group that were to have been destinations for contracted Caspian oil from Azerbaijan. Last month, Yuschenko agreed with the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev to fill the OBP with technical oil for testing, to put it into operation later on.