New Europe pushes old pipeline idea

A LONG-DISCUSSED plan to import Caspian oil through the Black Sea and Ukraine to Poland received a boost last month when five former soviet states signed an agreement to develop the project. The plan would involve reversing the flow of the existing Odessa-Brody pipeline in Ukraine and extending it to Plock and Gdansk, in Poland. Poland and Lithuania, two signatories to a deal agreed at a summit in Vilnius last month, think the pipeline would help break their countries' dependence on Russian crude supplies. Analysts say it is an old idea with little future. For the Baltic States the political incentive to diversify oil imports has increased since Russia cut off piped shipments to the Latvian