Wall Street Journal - April 7, 1999
Former Israeli Intelligence Agent Is an Unlikely Player in Asia Oil
By JAMES M. DORSEY Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HERZLIYAH, Israel -- A former Israeli intelligence agent seems an unlikely player in the struggle to exploit the vast untapped pools of crude oil and natural gas in Central Asia that the Soviet Union failed to extract when it controlled the region.
Now that countries in the area have won their independence, powerful forces, including Russia, Iran and the U.S., are waging a battle to win part of this natural wealth. And 53-year-old Yosef A. Maiman possesses probably the one key to success in the region: the ear of one of its autocratic leaders. For the past few years, Mr. Maiman has served as the right-hand man on energy matters to President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, home to the world's third-largest natural-gas reserves.
In this role, Mr. Maiman has wittingly or unwittingly furthered the geopolitical goals of both the U.S. and Israel. How? By nudging the Turkmen leader to bypass Russia and Iran in building the country's main gas-export pipeline.
The race to find a market for Turkmen gas, and a way to get it there, has picked up great speed of late. Mr. Maiman was the behind-the-scenes player in the $2.5 billion agreement that Mr. Niyazov signed in February with PSG International to build an export pipeline between Turkmenistan and Turkey. PSG is a joint venture between Bechtel Enterprises, a unit of Bechtel Group Inc., and General Electric Co.'s finance arm, GE Capital Services. Mr. Maiman acted as the intermediary between the Turkmenis and the U.S. firms.
The contract represents a victory for the U.S. The companies involved are both American. And for Washington, the pipeline deal freezes out Russia and Iran, which Mr. Niyazov had been reluctant to challenge. Russia and Iran quickly denounced the project. In early February, Russian gas monopoly RAO Gazprom teamed up with Italy's ENI SpA and Dutch financial backer ABN-Amro Holding NV to build a competing gas pipeline across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey.
Obstacles stand in the way before the first pipe can be laid. But Mr. Maiman takes pride in having brought the ball this far. "This is the Great Game all over," Mr. Maiman says during an interview in his office in Herzliyah, an Israeli resort town, referring to a late 19th century, three-way contest for control of Central Asia. "Controlling the transport route is controlling the product."
Israel's security interests in the region have been furthered, as well. "Maiman is the Israeli-Turkmenistan relationship," says Shmuel Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's director of Commonwealth of Independent States affairs. "He is our ambassador at large. He opens doors and understands the rules of the game."
A stocky chain smoker, Mr. Maiman slipped into the role of policy maker and trusted presidential aide by accident. Looking for new business abroad, Mr. Maiman in the early 1990s noticed the arid land in Turkmenistan was similar to Israel's -- a perfect place to transplant his experience in drip irrigation. Up went greenhouses, making his company, Merhav Group, a rare investor in the country of 4.5 million.
The greenhouses got him noticed in the presidential palace. He says he convinced Mr. Niyazov that he would be able to arrange funding and investors to upgrade the 40-year-old Turkmenbashi refinery. He also promised Turkmenistan better political access abroad. Mr. Niyazov gave the green light for the refinery project, and off went the Israelis.
In the end, Mr. Maiman came up with the funding and signed up several companies, among them Germany's Mannesmann AG and France's Technip SA, to do the $1.4 billion reconstruction of the refinery. Work started in 1994.