Azerbaijan and Russia partly restored the flow of natural gas to Georgia on Monday, using an alternate pipeline to ease an energy shortage that developed after saboteurs blew up two Russian pipelines and an electricity transmission line Sunday.
In spite of the renewed flow of gas, much of it sent from Russia through Azerbaijan while technicians worked to repair the machinery, Georgia experienced a day with little heat and scattered electrical blackouts.
Schools and factories closed. At nightfall, as temperatures hovered near freezing, large sections of the capital fell dark. Many shops sold goods by candlelight.
Georgian officials said it would be at least two days before electricity was fully restored and as long as a week before gas lines returned to normal pressure.
With heat provided to hospitals and electricity available for more than half of households, officials said they had avoided a catastrophe.
Azerbaijan quickly helps
Partial gas flow, they said, was restored because of swift help from neighboring Azerbaijan, which agreed to sell Georgia an emergency supply through a long abandoned pipeline that was repaired in 2004 and 2005. The gas, some from Azeri reserves, was mingled with increased flow from Russia and sent along to Georgia.
The flow from Azerbaijan was switched on Sunday night. By nightfall Monday, officials expected the pipeline to carry two-thirds of the daily requirement of 4.5 million cubic meters for Georgia, according to the deputy energy minister, Aleko Khetaguri.
“Hour by hour, the pressure is increasing,” he said.
The repaired pipeline, Khetaguri added, was a remnant of a Soviet network that carried natural gas from Iran through Azerbaijan to Georgia before the 1980s.
Officials appeared pleased and said that whatever the cause of the sabotage, the disruption had been minimized by using the restored pipeline.
“If this had happened one year ago, the whole system would have collapsed,” President Mikhail Saakashvili said.
The cut in Russian gas lines also severed the flow to Armenia, downstream from Georgia in the network. Armenia, however, had fuel reserves and reported fewer problems.
There was no new insight into what caused the four explosions that toppled two power trellises and destroyed two pipelines in southern Russia.
Islamic groups operate in the area, often in collaboration with Chechen separatist fighters. Armed irregular formations also operate in Georgia, in the separatist enclave of South Ossetia.
None claimed responsibility for the sabotage, in wintry mountainous terrain and at widely separated locations, suggesting technical sophistication and an awareness of the workings of the energy system.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia ordered the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, to increase security at energy complexes in the region and instructed the chief of the country’s police to help with the investigation, Russian news agencies reported.
Suspicions, but no suspects
Russian officials, who have suggested that militants might have been involved in the pipeline sabotage, offered no further suggestion about whom they suspected was responsible.
“It would be incorrect to jump to any conclusions before the end of the investigation,” said Putin’s envoy to the region, Dmitri Kozak, according to Interfax news agency.
Saakashvili, who said on Sunday that he suspected that Russia had orchestrated the explosions to put political and economic pressure on Georgia, repeated his remarks Monday.
“The whole circumstances look very dubious to us,” he said, adding that, by his reading of the map, the areas of the explosions are under the control of Russian border guards and are not used by any insurgent group. He presented no clear evidence, however, of Russian involvement.
Saakashvili’s government also called for Russia to turn over to Georgia two men who it says are members of Russian intelligence services and whom it accuses of organizing sabotage against Georgian power lines in 2004. Russia has refused.
Demonstrators gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi, carrying placards and an image of Putin that read “Gasputin,” a play on Rasputin.
