Thursday, June 9 2005 17:19 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Baku: With its appetite for energy growing ever larger, India today (Jun 9, 2005) proposed to diversify its sources of crude supplies by using an Israeli pipeline to access crude oil from the Central Asia and Caspian Sea region to feed its fuel needs.

Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, addressing the 12th International Caspian Oil and Gas Conference in Baku, said the 254-km long Eilot-Ashqelon pipeline could be used for transporting east Mediterranean crude to the Red Sea, from where it can be shipped to India.

Oil, according to Aiyar, could be pumped from the Caspian region into the just commissioned 1,764-km Baku (Azerbaijan-Tblisi (Georgia)-Ceyhan (Turkey)) pipeline to reach the Mediterranean Sea, from where it could be pumped into the Israeli pipeline for Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) to pick up at Red Sea for transporting it to India.