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Caspian Oil

Introduction

The Baku - Tbilsi - Ceyhan pipeline.

The Caspian Sea region has become a central focus point for untapped oil and natural gas resources from the southern portion of the former Soviet Union. Beginning in May 2005, oil from the southern sections of the Caspian Sea began pumping through a new pipeline (built by a BP-led consortium) to the Turkish seaport of Ceyhan. The 8-year effort of Western capital, technology, and diplomacy had aimed to decrease reliance on Middle Eastern oil. However, in recent years, new oil finds and production performance in the Caspian region have not met levels that had been expected in the 1990s. At any rate, the Caspian Sea's production levels, even at their peak, will be much smaller than OPEC countries' output. Production levels are expected to reach 4 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2015, compared to 45 million bbl/d for the OPEC countries in that year.

– Caspian Sea Country Analysis Brief: Background from the US Department of Energy.

The Balkan pipelines.

Because oil exports from the Caspian Sea region are projected to increase rapidly in the next decade, several oil pipeline proposals to bypass Turkey's increasingly congested Bosporus and Dardanelles straits (see map) are under consideration or in development. Located on the western shores of the Black Sea, a major thoroughfare for world oil exports, the countries of Southeastern Europe hope to grow as transit centers, carrying Russian and Caspian Sea Region oil to market in Europe. Several pipelines are currently in various stages of construction and development:

• The Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Oil Pipeline (AMBO).
• Burgas-Alexandroupolis Pipeline.
• South-East European Line (SEEL).

– Southeastern Europe Country Analysis Brief from the US Department of Energy.

Geopolitical considerations

A geopolitical pattern has become clear over the past months. One-by-one, with documented overt and covert Washington backing and financing, new US-friendly regimes have been put in place in former Soviet states which are in a strategic relation to possible pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea.

Ukraine

Ukraine is now more or less in the hands of a Washington-backed ‘democratic’ regime under Viktor Yushchenko and his billionaire Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, known in Ukraine as the ‘gas princess’ for the fortune she made as a government official, allegedly through her dubious dealings earlier with Ukraine Energy Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and Gazprom.

The Yushchenko government's domestic credibility is reportedly beginning to fade as Ukrainian Orange Revolution euphoria gives way to economic realities. In any event, on June 16 in Kiev, Yushchenko hosted a special meeting of the Davos World Economic Forum to discuss possible investments into the New Ukraine.

At the Kiev meeting, Timoshenko's government announced that they plan to build a new oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian across Ukraine into Poland which would lessen Ukraine's reliance on Moscow oil and gas supplies. Timoshenko also revealed that the Ukrainian government was in positive talks with Chevron, the former company of Condoleezza Rice, for the project.

Azerbaijan

In Azerbaijan four youth groups – Yokh! (No!), Yeni Fikir (New Thinking), Magam (It's Time) and the Orange Movement of Azerbaijan – comprise the emerging opposition, an echo of Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia where the US Embassy and specially-trained NGO operatives orchestrated the US-friendly regime changes with help of the US National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and the Soros Foundation.

According to Baku journalists, Ukraine's Pora (It's Time), Georgia's Kmara (Enough) and Serbia's Otpor (Resistance) are cited by all four Azeri opposition organizations as role models.

Georgia

The Pentagon already de facto runs the Georgia military, with its US Special Forces officers, and Georgia has asked to join NATO.

Kyrgystan

According to reports from mainstream US journalists, including Craig Smith in the New York Times and Philip Shishkin in the Wall Street Journal, the opposition in Kyrgystan has had ‘more than a little help from US friends’ to paraphrase the Beatles song. Under the Freedom Support Act of the US Congress, in 2004 the dirt poor country of Kyrgystan got a total of $12 million in US government funds to support the building of democracy. Twelve million will buy a lot of democracy in an economically desolate, forsaken land such as Kyrgystan.

– Extracts from Color Revolutions, Geopolitics and the Baku Pipeline by F. William Engdahl, 25 June 2005.