U.S. places large bet on pipeline

American-backed plans to build a nearly 1,100-mile-long oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean are about to go from what skeptics once called a "pipe dream" to a reality.

Trailing from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to the Turkish seaport of Ceyhan, British energy giant BP will bring the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline on line this month. One of the longest oil routes in the world, it's expected to pump 1 million barrels of oil a day by 2010.