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BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) -- A team of U.S. experts has approved an oil pipeline linking the Romanian port of Constanta with Trieste in Italy as ``viable and safe,'' a local news agency reported Saturday.
Amid tough competition from neighboring countries, Romania is pushing forward a plan to build a pipeline through its territory to transport crude oil from the Caspian Sea to Western Europe.
``The United States is interested in helping Romania become an important center of energy corridors,'' U.S. Ambassador to Romania James Rosapepe said in a statement quoted by the official news agency Rompres.
The U.S. experts said the pipeline, designed to transport crude from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia to Western Europe, would be able to carry competitively priced high quality oil through politically stable countries, according to Rosapepe.
Romanians see the route to Italy by way of Hungary and Slovenia as the straightest and the cheapest, although Bulgaria and Turkey are also in the running for the pipeline.
The United States previously supported a pipeline through Turkey, but failed to garner international support.
According to the U.S. study, the pipeline would start working in 2002, and 10 years later would be able to transport 47 million tons of crude oil per year.
Caspian reserves are believed to be the richest in the world besides those in the Middle East, and there is fierce competition to access them.