Former Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh, head of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said on 5 February that the government's decision to use the Odesa-Brody pipeline to pump Caspian oil to Europe and reject a temporary reversal of the flow, as suggested by Russia, was not based on any feasibility study, Interfax reported.

Kinakh also claimed the government made its decision on Odesa-Brody without the relevant contracts with oil providers or oil consumers. Oleksandr Horodetskyy, the president of the TNK-Ukraine oil company, meanwhile called Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP's proposal to ship 9 million tons of crude annually in the pipeline's "reverse mode" -- from Brody to Odesa -- the only realistic offer on the immediate use of the pipeline, which has been idle since 2002.

(RFE/RL 6.ii.04)