CEPMA celebrates its 50th anniversary
16 June 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the Central Europe Pipeline Management Agency (CEPMA). This NATO agency provides operational, technical and financial coordination for the management of the Central Europe Pipeline System (CEPS).
CEPS is the largest of the NATO pipeline systems set up during the Cold War to supply Alliance forces with fuel. It is used by six host country or user nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United States) and is designed and managed to meet operational requirements in central Europe in peace, crisis and conflict.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, CEPS played an important logistical role in the first Gulf War in 1990, in the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo and, more recently, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Each time the system was pushed to the limit of its capabilities, and CEPMA has been looking at ways to rationalize and modernize its infrastructure to keep up the flexibility and adaptability of the CEPS, while making it less expensive for NATO and its Member countries.
The system has been downsized and optimized, and a business development policy aimed at non-military customers successfully developed in parallel to enable CEPS continue playing a first-rate economic and logistic support role.
In 2007, for the first time in its history, CEPS delivered more than thirteen million cubic metres of fuel to its military and non-military customers, mainly jet fuel.
For more information, contact Mr. Robert Goyens, Central Europe Pipeline Management Agency
Tel: 33 1 3924 4932
E-mail: r.goyens@cepma.nato.int