The pipeline, over 200 metres in length, carried by Friends of the Earth & Kurdish Human Rights Project campaigners - it stretched the whole length of Bishopsgate in London's financial district.

The protest is part of an ongoing campaign against the use of UK tax payers' money to help fund a highly controversial oil pipeline through Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

If built, the pipeline would heighten the risk of conflict in the region, carry more oil causing more climate change and damage sensitive natural habitats.

The route taken highlighted the key players involved in the pipeline:

* EBRD
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development plans to help fund it using UK tax payer's money.
* BP
Leader of the consortium promoting the pipeline. Stated publicly that they need "free public money" for it.
* ABN Amro
The Dutch bank are advising BP on financing the deal.

Friends of the Earth delivers a section of the pipeline to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Friends of the Earth Georgia organised a parallel protest outside EBRD's office in Tbilisi, Georgia - one of the locations on the route of the oil pipeline.

MORE INFO:

Baku-Ceyhan Campaign:
 http://www.bakuceyhan.org.uk/

Foe Campaign:
 http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/baku_ceyhan/index.html

BACKGROUND:

BP (along with other oil companies) intends to begin construction on a proposed pipelines system in spring 2003, that would run from the offshore oil and gas fields of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea, to the southern shores of Turkey on the Mediterranean via Georgia.

The main element of the project is an oil pipeline. Starting just near Baku in Azerbaijan, running close to Tbilisi in Georgia, and finishing south of Ceyhan in Turkey, it is known as the Baku-Ceyhan (or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline.

The project would be subsidised by the British public money, through the Export Credit Guarantee Department and other financial institutions.

The Baku Ceyhan campaign is campaigning to prevent British taxpayers’ money being used to cause an environmental, human rights and social disaster.

Children at Umid village, near BP's Sangachal terminal in eastern Azerbaijan, where the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline would start.

* Contracts already signed between BP and the three host governments have been described as 'colonial', as they threaten to bypass social, environmental and other domestic legislation, giving effective sovereignty to BP and its partners.

* The pipelines would pass through or near seven different conflict zones. They would lead to the creation of a 1,000-mile militarised corridor through three countries that are known for their poor human rights record.

* They would cause economic and physical disruption to hundreds of communities along the route, while delivering no energy to them: despite the severe energy poverty in region, the oil and gas would all be destined for the West. The pipelines would require the confiscation of people's land, often without compensation.

* They would transport oil and gas whose impact on climate change would be equivalent to more than the pollution from every power station in the UK.

* They would pass through a region of northern Turkey which suffers from severe seismicity, where earthquakes have been known to level whole cities. Three supertankers per day would leave the port of Ceyhan in Turkey, threatening the viability of fishing in the area, and the unspoilt Turkish Mediterranean coast.

All this is especially troubling, given BP’s appalling environmental and human rights record in other pipeline systems it has already built – such as those in Colombia, Alaska and the North Sea.