Something else to consider. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was sabotaged in Turkey by the PKK, on August 6, 2008, and has been offline since. On August 7, 2008, Saakashvili launches an offensive to take back South Ossetia.

Can somebody who’s better informed than I am tell me how to read this? My intuition is that Saakashvili made an opportunistic move: since the Georgian government does not want to be responsible for a pipeline turnoff (stability and security being the reasons why Georgia got the pipeline in the first place), the pipeline being already turned off gave Saakashvili a window of lowered political risk — vis-a-vis its pipeline partners, who would be very upset if precipitous action led to the Georgian part of the pipeline being damaged, and vis-a-vis the West, who want to avoid any increase in oil price due to supply shortage or higher risk-premiums.

Does this make sense? Can anybody tell what that means for where we’re headed?