Give me Caspian gas!

Brussels and Washington strengthen diplomatic support for Nabucco and Trans-Caspian

Against the backdrop of tensions in the Transcaucasus, Western politicians and diplomats have once again increased their activity around alternative energy supply projects to Russia , primarily gas. EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs (pictured) said yesterday that the EU needs to speed up the political process surrounding the construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline from Turkey to Austria to reduce dependence on gas supplies from Russia. “Our task of diversifying energy supply routes has become even more important after the events in Georgia,” said a member of the European Commission. -- We need political decisions to remove all obstacles to the construction of Nabucco . There are obstacles we need to overcome." The instability of the transit of hydrocarbon raw materials through the Trans-Caucasian corridor (namely, through it in the future it is planned to fill the gas pipeline to the EU, bypassing Russia) does not frighten him. “This has not changed our view or the view of the European Investment Bank that this project should receive support,” Mr. Piebalgs is confident.

However, as is known, the main obstacle to the implementation of the Nabucco project is not so much the problems between Russia and Georgia as the lack of guarantees that the pipe will be filled with 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually for at least 30 years. Europeans and politically supportive Americans were unable to persuade resource suppliers to sign an obligation to supply the gas pipeline with raw materials. Today, Nabucco lobbyists pin their last hopes for stable filling of the pipeline on Turkmenistan and partly Kazakhstan.

Yesterday it became known that Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov received US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs George Krol on September 3. As Turkmenistan.ru reports with reference to the press service of the Turkmen leader, “the parties particularly focused on the possibilities of cooperation in the fuel and energy sector, where Turkmenistan is implementing a program to diversify the development of the industry.” It is separately emphasized that “US business circles see Turkmenistan as a promising and wealthy partner and are ready to build relationships with it on a long-term basis.”

Moreover, on Wednesday in Ashgabat, Mr. Berdimuhamedov met with the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources of Turkey, Mehmet Hilmi Güler, who confirmed Ankara’s high interest in the supply of Turkmen energy resources, in particular gas. And the President of Turkmenistan invited Turkish partners to consider the possibility of participating in projects to develop the Turkmen shelf of the Caspian Sea. As is known, the Turkish state-owned company Botas is a participant in the Nabucco project, through which Caspian gas is planned to be supplied from Turkey to Austria through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. In order for fuel from Turkmenistan to reach this pipeline, Brussels and Washington revived the old project for the construction of an underwater Trans-Caspian gas pipeline to Azerbaijan. And there is already a line of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, which is not operating at full capacity, through which Azerbaijani gas from the Shah Deniz field is now supplied to the Turkish market. At the same time, without Turkmen gas, even Azerbaijan cannot sign up to participate in Nabucco, since it has very modest export capabilities and is forced to focus on gas pipeline projects of smaller capacity from Turkey to Greece and further to Italy.

In addition, the legal status of the Caspian Sea has not yet been determined, which is an additional difficulty for the construction of an underwater bridge between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Yesterday in Baku, at the 23rd meeting of the special working group to develop a convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, the Iranian delegation unequivocally spoke out against the laying of pipelines along the bottom. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Safari said: “We are against this, given the negative impact on the ecology of the sea.” Moscow tacitly shares this position. The diplomat noted that there are Iranian and Russian directions for transporting energy resources. “If there are such opportunities, why cause such damage to the environment?” - RIA Novosti quotes him. According to him, the text of the convention is 60-70% agreed upon. This means that unless a diplomatic miracle occurs, the document is unlikely to be finalized by the October meeting on the status of the Caspian at the ministerial level.

At the same time, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, quoted by the Novosti-Azerbaijan agency, stated that “some disagreements existing at this stage regarding the issue of legal status should not prevent the Caspian states from exercising their sovereign rights in the Caspian Sea, as well as multilateral and bilateral cooperation of the Caspian countries." The problem, however, is that Baku has long-standing disagreements with Ashgabat regarding the division of the Caspian shelf. After the death of Turkmenbashi Saparmurat Niyazov and the election of Berdimuhamedov as president of the country, the dialogue with Azerbaijan on this matter resumed, including with the active diplomatic support of Washington. But agreements have not yet been reached.

Alexey GRIVACHS