Written question asked by Simon Thomas (Plaid Cymru) on Tuesday, 22 February 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 22 March 2005. It was answered by Douglas Alexander (Labour) on Tuesday, 22 March 2005 on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry.

Dept of Trade and Industry

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, how many incidents of land being used outside the 28-metre Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan pipeline corridor have been reported to her; whether the use of unexpropriated land outside the 28-metre corridor in relation to the Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan pipeline project constitutes a breach of loan agreements.

Answer: Mr. Simon Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) how many incidents of land being used outside the 28-metre Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline corridor have been reported to her; [218280] (2) whether the use of unexpropriated land outside the 28-metre corridor in relation to the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline project constitutes a breach of loan agreements. [218281] Mr. Alexander: The use of unexpropriated land outside the 28-metre pipeline corridor would represent a breach of the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) loan agreement for the project, if it were considered to have a material effect on the project. Breaches not rectified within a reasonable period, in accordance with the project's Environment and Social Action Plan and the ECGD loan agreement, would constitute an incident for which an event of default could be called. In its second site visit report (June-July 2004) the lender group's independent environmental consultant, D'Appolonia, reported that there had been unplanned use of land outside of the 28 metre pipeline corridor in Turkey on an unspecified number of occasions. However, these breaches of ECGD's loan agreement were rectified within the required period.

Secondary information