La disputa sul Gas si surriscalda con Lukashenka
– Il presidente bielorusso, Lukashenka, ha ordinato la sospensione delle forniture di gas russe passanti per il suo paese all’Europa, fino a quando Gazprom pagherà il pedaggio di $260mn. chiesto dalla Bielorussia.
o Lukashenka risponde così alla riduzione del gas per i consumi della Bielorussa decisa da Gazprom
o per bollette non pagate di $192mn.
o Lukashenka: la disputa sul gas è diventata una vera e propria guerra.
– Gazprom rivendica la proprietà anche del gasdotto Yamal passante per la Bielorussia.
– La Russia avrebbe predisposto piani di emergenza per inviare gas aggiuntivo alla UE attraverso l’Ucraina.
– La disputa sul gas ha aggravato le tensioni tra Bielorussia e Russia, lo scorso mese Russia e Kazakistan hanno concordato di continuare da sole il progetto di unione doganale che doveva includere la Bielorussia; la Bielorussia ha irritato Mosca accogliendo il deposto presidente Kirghizo, Bakijev.
– Secondo il direttore del centro di analisi bielorusso “Strategia”, dietro alla questione del gas ci sarebbe quella del governo Lukashenka, che Mosca vorrebbe deporre.
Nabucco preme per i progetti del Caspio
– Settima Conferenza e Mostra Internazionale del petrolio e del gas (International Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition), a Baku.
– In vista la sigla di un accordo quadro sul gas Azerbaijan-Turchia, che premessa per la costruzione del gasdotto Nabucco (dal Caspio, attraverso Turchia, Bulgaria, Romania e Ungheria, all’Austria), accordo che richiederà ancora diversi mesi per essere messo in atto. Gli accordi erano stati rinviati per un negoziato in corso ed ora risolto sul prezzo del gas azerbaijano per la Turchia.
– Il volume di gas che Nabucco dovrebbe trasportare a pieno regime è di 31 miliardi di m3/anno.
– La dichiarazione del primo ministro turco, Erdogan, che Nabucco sarà alimentato dal gas iracheno fa pensare che la Turchia abbia diminuito le pressioni a favore della partecipazione dell’Iran.
– L’austriaca OMV (società dell’energia tra i leader del progetto Nabucco) sta esplorando la produzione di gas nel Kurdistan iracheno. In negoziato anche con il Turkmenistan, che sembra disposto a fornire il gas;
o il Turkmenistan ha deciso di utilizzare le proprie risorse per ricostruire e rinnovare il gasdotto E-O, che passa nel Sud.
o I progetti trans-caspici comprendono un gasdotto dal Turkmenistan e il sistema di trasporto Kazakistan-Caspio, lungo la costa orientale del Caspio per prendere il petrolio dal grande deposito offshore di Kashagan, passando per l’Azerbaijan, e poi versarlo nell’oleodotto Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (per Georgia verso la costa mediterranea turca).
Il progetto era finora ritenuto di lontana realizzazione, mancando accordi sui volumi di gas da trasportare (le norme UE, inserite nell’accordo intergovernativo per Nabucco, prescrivono l’accesso aperto per trasferimenti di energia).
Gas row turns up heat on Lukashenka
By Breffni O’Rourke
– President Aleksandr Lukashenka of Belarus on Tuesday said he has ordered a halt to all transit deliveries of Russian gas to Europe, in the latest move in the worsening energy dispute between Minsk and Moscow.
The move comes just one day after Russian state-owned conglomerate Gazprom started to reduce the quantity of gas piped to Belarus for its own domestic use because of what it says are unpaid bills of US$192 million. It further reduced supplies on Tuesday.
Lukashenka made his surprise announcement at a meeting in Minsk with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
– He said the row between the two countries over debt repayments is turning into a full "gas war", and he said the transit ban will stay until Gazprom pays what he says is a debt of $260 million in gas transit fees.
– After an initial reduction of 15% on June 21, Gazprom said it was now delivering 30% less gas than usual to Belarus.
Belarusian officials had previously said that gas supplies westward to Europe would not be affected by the bilateral dispute.
– "[Belarus] had no reason to make this decision," Gazprom spokesman in Moscow Sergei Kupriyanov said. "It’s not just our gas. It is our pipe, it belongs to us, we own it."
– In Brussels, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, Marlene Holzner, said the commission expects both Belarus and Moscow to respect their "contractual obligations," and not to impede gas supplies to Europe. She said, however, that Russia had already prepared contingency plans to send extra gas to the EU via Ukraine if necessary.
"If Belarus will really, indeed, take gas from the Yamal pipeline, which is a pipeline which has gas only for the European Union, [Russia] will deliver the gas via Ukraine to Poland and to Germany," Holzner said.
She said the European Commission is continuing to monitor the situation and is in close contact with Russia and Belarus.
– Europe has fresh memories of an earlier gas dispute – last year’s payment row between Ukraine and Russia, which disrupted gas supplies to EU consumers for two weeks in midwinter.
– The gas disagreement has further soured Belarus-Russia relations at a time when they are already strained. Last month, Russia and Kazakhstan agreed to proceed alone on a customs-union project that was to have included Belarus. Minsk has also annoyed Moscow by giving sanctuary to deposed Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Russian Service, the director of the Belarusian analytic center "Strategia" Leonid Zaika said that the Russian leadership’s exasperation with Lukashenka lies behind the gas conflict between Russia and Belarus.
Zaika said that "finally" after so many years the Kremlin has begun to clearly speak out about Lukashenka and his political future.
"This is not a conflict. It is the beginning of a new Kremlin policy in the former Soviet area," Zaika said. "They were successful in overthrowing the government in Kyrgyzstan. There was a change of leaders in Ukraine. And the Kremlin has now decided to clearly state its attitude toward Aleksandr Lukashenka and his political future."
Written by Breffni O’Rourke based on RFE/RL Russian and Belarus services and agency reports.
By Robert M Cutler
– MONTREAL – Energy conferences in the Caspian Sea region have come so fast and furious in recent years that some industry and government figures consider them a dime a dozen. In fact, the organizers are sometimes the ones who draw most advantage from them, in view of steep fees for participation. Nevertheless, the current International Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition looks to be an exception. It is the seventeenth in the series hosted in Baku.
– It is no surprise that all eyes are on the intended signing, a few days hence, of Azerbaijan-Turkey natural gas agreements (see Nabucco, and Baku, filling up on gas, Asia Times Online, May 14, 2010), setting the stage for construction of the Nabucco pipeline, which is projected to bring gas to the Baumgarten gas hub in Austria from the Caspian Sea basin via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary.
Long considered as a longshot project in view of the absence of contracted volumes of gas for transit, Nabucco has in recent months and especially weeks come to be regarded as an odds-on favorite. Critics never appreciated that the initial absence of such contracts reflected new European Union[e] administrative norms prescribing open access for such energy transit; norms that are incorporated in the Nabucco Intergovernmental Agreement as signed and ratified by the states through whose territory the pipeline is set to be laid.
– According to Azerbaijani sources, the signature of these agreements, due last month, was postponed because another energy conference will take place in Ankara in a few days, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to make the signing a centerpiece of that event. There have been some indications, however, that some details of a special formula for the price of Azerbaijani gas for Turkey required further working out, in a document separate from the general agreement, during a recent visit to Baku by representatives of the Turkish company BOTAS.
– The price is now set to be indexed to the world market price on the one hand and, on the other, the growth of throughput through the pipeline itself. The deal being readied for signing in Ankara is a general framework agreement, the implementation of which will take several months as contracts among participating companies from the two sides are drawn up, vetted, and signed. One should expect some press commentary that tries to spin that fact as a shortcoming and further threat to realization of the agreed terms, but it is simply normal business practice in the industry and the region.
– This is the context in which Wolfgang Sporrer, the Caspian regional manager for OMV, the Austrian energy company that is one of the leaders of the Nabucco project, has pointed out that Azerbaijani gas can transit Turkey through Nabucco even without a bilateral agreement because the Nabucco Intergovernmental Agreement, which Turkey’s parliament has ratified, already regulates that transit.
– Erdogan has recently affirmed in public that Iraqi gas will feed Nabucco, and he seems to have diminished his insistence on Iranian participation.
– Sporrer also underlines that gas can begin to flow in 2014 even if the Shah Deniz Phase Two deposit, in Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea offshore sector, does not come online until 2016 or 2017, as Azerbaijani officials have recently suggested may be the case. That is because Nabucco’s 31 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) design volume will not be reached immediately,
o such that other sources such as Iraq may furnish the initial flow. OMV, for instance, is exploring gas production in the territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.
– Sporrer adds: "We are talking to Turkmenistan and believe that actually Turkmenistan is ready and open to supply gas to the EU through Nabucco." Turkmenistan’s recent decision to use its own resources to rebuild and renovate the East-West Pipeline, which runs across the south of the country, has been widely interpreted as such a signal.
– One of the conditions that Russian companies wished to impose on their own participation in this project was the prerogative of "first refusal" over the purchase of the gas flowing through it. (See Tectonic shift under way in Turkmen gas, Asia Times Online, May 17, 2010.)
– Later this month, an interministerial delegation from Baku will visit Brussels to discuss with EU officials the legal, technical, and commercial aspects of trans-Caspian projects, including an eventual Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline from Turkmenistan. These projects also include, however, the Kazakhstan-Caspian Transportation System, which will run along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to take oil from the massive Kashagan offshore deposit from Eskene to Kuryk (near Aqtau) for transit to Azerbaijan and insertion into the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline that goes through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean Sea coast.
– In that connection, Azerbaijan is expected to announce soon an increase in the proven reserves in the offshore deposit that feeds the BTC, which was originally built to carry 1 million barrels per day (bpd) but now, thanks to engineering improvements, carries 1.2 million and likely will carry more in the future as further improvements are added.
Dr Robert M Cutler (http://www.robertcutler.org), educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The University of Michigan, has researched and taught at universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia. Now senior research fellow in the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Canada, he also consults privately in a variety of fields.