Tesi Vladimir Socor
(senior fellow Jamestown Foundation, Washington, che pubblica Eurasia Daily
Monitor. Linea atlantista, anti-russa):
- Nel Caspio nuovi
giacimenti, scoperti e sviluppati da grandi gruppi “occidentali”, daranno 150
milioni di tonnellate oil [circa 1 MD barili/anno, quasi 1 milione
barili/giorno] intorno al 2015. - Russia ha attualmente il controllo delle rotte
petrolifere. - UE, principale acquirente di quel petrolio, deve
appoggiare rotte esterne a Russia. - La Russia oggi assorbe il petrolio e il gas prodotti nel
bacino orientale del Caspio; UE scivola verso doppia dipendenza dalla
Russia, fornitrice diretta e mediatrice degli acquisti dal Caspio. - In Kazakistan scoperti
tre dei più grandi giacimenti di petrolio del mondo: dopo i campi in terraferma
di Tengiz e Karachaganak, è in corso di sviluppo Kashagan, il maggiore
giacimento offshore scoperto negli ultimi 30 anni. - Ministro kazako Energia, Vladimir
Shkolnik, “ben visto a Washington e Houston” [capitale USA del petrolio]
spiega che 20 m t annue possono essere inviate via nave attraverso il Caspio a Baku,
e di lì immesse nell’oleodotto (in costruzione) che sbocca a Ceyhan
(SudEst Turchia). - Oleodotto
Tengiz-Novorossiisk sul Mar Nero (Russia) aumenterà la portata da 28 a 60 mt;
altro oleodotto porta petrolio alle raffinerie di Samara, che aumenteranno la
capacità da 15 a 25 mt. - Accordo-quadro che
dovrebbe essere firmato tra Kazakistan e Azerbaijan prevede trasporto di
20 mt a Baku, con 5 grosse navi-cisterna da costruire. Ma per quantità
superiori sarebbe conveniente un oleodotto trans-Caspio, che potrebbe
trasportare 50 mt/anno, di cui una parte essere portata sul Mar Nero e
alimentare l’oleodotto Odessa-Brody, verso Polonia e l’Europa Occid. - Russia e Iran si oppongono a questo oleodotto “per ragioni
ecologiche”, come anche a un gasdotto trans-Caspio dal Turkmenistan che
ha un potenziale di esportazione quasi pari a Russia (1° mondiale). - UE deve sviluppare una
politica di accesso diretto all’energia del Caspio; - è un interesse comune
della “comunità euro-atlantica”; - ma per ora il corridoio caspico Est-Ovest ha preso forma sono
come moncone con base in Azerbaijan.
[Nota. L’articolo ignora
la rotta orientale, alla quale lavora la Cina, e quella meridionale (India)]
By VLADIMIR SOCOR
October 7, 2005
ALMATY, Kazakhstan
— The rapidly changing nation of Kazakhstan, and its despotic neighbor Turkmenistan,
can help the West — in particular Europe — reduce its dependence on Middle
Eastern and Russian oil and gas. To achieve that goal, these two eastern
Caspian countries must be linked by pipelines to Europe, via the South Caucasus
and Turkey.
Yet, at a
conference of the West’s leading oil and gas companies here this week, that
strategic issue is hardly a topic of discussion. These firms have found and
are extracting the oil and gas from these countries, while Russia holds an as
yet unchallenged monopoly on the transit routes to consumer countries.
This has no
precedent and no parallel in the world of energy and geopolitics. Russia,
the world’s second-largest producer and exporter of oil (behind only Saudi
Arabia), and global No. 1 for gas, absorbs the oil and gas produced in the
eastern Caspian basin. As a result, Europe — the main potential consumer of
Caspian energy — is sliding into a dual dependence on Russian supplies as well
as Russian-mediated supplies from this region.
Such dependence on
a single, powerful transit country is dangerous to the producer countries as
well. Three of the world’s richest hydrocarbon fields are in Kazakhstan.
After the onshore Tengiz and Karachaganak supergiant fields came
on stream, the Kashagan field became the biggest offshore oil discovery
anywhere in the world in the last 30 years, and is due on stream before the
end of this decade. Even without taking into account possible new
discoveries on Kazakhstan’s continental shelf, oil output is projected to
increase from some 50 million tons annually at present to at least 150 million
tons per year by 2015, on the strength of Western technology and capital
investment. The export routes out of Kashagan will be chosen soon. That
choice can either reinforce or break Russia’s monopoly on the transit of
Kazakhstan’s oil and gas to international markets.
Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Vladimir Shkolnik, a nuclear physicist by profession, has
overseen oil and gas development in Kazakhstan in recent years. He is well
received in Washington and Houston. As Mr. Shkolnik explained to me here, some
20 million tons of oil annually from the anticipated output of Kashagan can be
exported by tankers across the Caspian Sea to Baku and then pumped into the
pipeline that carries Azerbaijani oil through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan, from where it goes to the world market.
Apart from these 20
million tons, however, international oil companies and Kazakhstan expect to continue
using Russian pipelines to export the lion’s share of oil from the country
between now and 2015 and even beyond. The line from Tengiz to Russia’s Black
Sea port of Novorossiisk is projected to increase its capacity from 28-30
million tons annually at present to 60 million tons, as soon as differences
with the Russian government over tariffs and taxes are resolved. Karachaganak’s
gas condensate output is scheduled to be exported partly to Russia’s
Orenburg refinery and partly through the pipeline to Novorossiisk. And the line
from Atyrau on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast to Russia’s oil-refining center in
Samara, on the Volga, is due for a capacity increase from 15 million tons
annually at present to 25 million tons annually before the end of this
decade.
Whether these intentions
are fulfilled or not, Kashagan can make the difference in terms of opening
alternative export routes out of Kazakhstan. The optimal solution would be a
trans-Caspian pipeline to carry the bulk of Kashagan’s projected annual output
of 50 million tons to Baku. While part of that volume could be pumped into
the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, another part could be routed to Georgia’s
Black Sea coast for shipment to Europe. For example, oil from Kazakhstan
alone can ensure the viability of Ukraine’s Odessa-Brody pipeline and its
linkup through Poland with EU oil markets.
Uzakbay Karabalin,
chairman of Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company Kazmunaigaz, told me that
Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan
plan to sign a framework agreement on trans-Caspian shipments of oil from
Kazakhstan to Baku before the end of this year. At this point, the project
envisages a tanker line — five tankers of the 60,000-tons class are to be
built — to shuttle across the Caspian Sea, carrying up to 20 million tons of
oil annually westward. That, however, is less than half of Kashagan’s
anticipated output. For annual volumes above 20 million tons, a
trans-Caspian pipeline becomes the most cost-effective mode of transport,
according to projections in both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.However, Russia
and Iran have teamed up to oppose the construction of such a pipeline,
just as they’ve opposed the American-initiated project of a trans-Caspian gas
pipeline from Turkmenistan, whose gas export potential may almost equal
Russia’s current export volume. In opposition to both of those projects,
Moscow and Tehran invoke ecological arguments for public consumption. Behind
that screen, Moscow resorts to political arm-twisting in order to retain a
monopoly on energy transit from the eastern Caspian basin or at least the
lion’s share of that transit.
It is high time,
before it becomes past time, for the EU to develop a policy for direct
access to eastern Caspian oil and gas. Such access is also a shared economic
and strategic interest of the Euro-Atlantic community, as Washington
realized long ago. The U.S.-backed East-West Caspian Energy Corridor
has taken shape thus far only as a rump based in Azerbaijan.
The producer,
transit and consumer countries, from the Caspian Sea to the South Caucasus to
Ukraine, Poland and other EU member countries aware of the stakes involved,
might together focus the collective mind of Brussels on the eastern Caspian
basin.
Mr. Socor is senior
fellow of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, publishers of the Eurasia
Daily Monitor.