Those who read A. Rashi's book on the Taliban will recall that one of the potential ionvestors in the mid-90's was an Argentine company. http://www.wrmea.com/archives/march2002/0203016.html
04/28/2002
March 2002
Special Report
The Great Caspian Sea Oil Pipeline Game—Part II
By Andrew I. Killgore
As Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes might have said to his amiable if rather literal-minded close friend, “It’s elementary, my dear Watson, the oil pipeline is the clue to everything. But there are several; you must take care to pick out the right one.”
The Baku (Azerbaijan)-Supsa (Georgia) pipeline is small potatoes. Recently expanded, it carries Azerbaijan’s disappointingly low oil production to Georgia’s Black Sea coast. The Turks oppose the shipping of petroleum via the Black Sea because tankers might be wrecked at Istanbul, their mega- city on the Bosporus, or in the Dardanelles Strait.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) pipeline carries oil from Kazakhstan’s huge onshore Tengiz field to Novorossiysk on Russia’s Black Sea coast. The Turks don’t like Tengiz-Novorossiysk, either, for environmental and other reasons. The Russians want to move more Caspian oil through their own country to Primorsk, their new port on the Baltic Sea’s Gulf of Finland. The Russians have another option, however, which is to send Caspian oil through the southern leg of its Druzhba pipeline, to exit on Croatia’s Adriatic coast.
Moscow talks of avoiding the Bosporus choke point with a possible new pipeline that would run from Burgas, Bulgaria, to Alexandropolous on Greece’s Aegean coast. This would be relatively short and cheap. It is not a new idea, but oil consultants tell the Washington Report that Athens has never picked up on it, perhaps because the line would run very close to the border with Turkey, with which Greece’s relations are traditionally tense.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell was recently in Astara, Kazakhstan’s new capital, he was told by President Nursultan Nazarbayef that his country favored an oil pipeline south through Iran to salt water in the Persian Gulf. Powell sidestepped Nazarbayef by saying the U.S. preferred Turkish and Russian routes.
A year ago Washington opposed Caspian oil going to Russia on the presumed grounds that the Russian route would detract from the Israeli- favored Turkish route. However, President George W. Bush’s rapport with President Vladimir Putin, plus Russia’s recent helpfulness in America’s war on terror, has put Moscow at least temporarily in Washington’s good graces. Consultants at Washington’s Petroleum Finance Company, in discussing the Caspian-oil-pipelines issue, recently rhetorically asked this writer, “In the future, would America rather depend on Russia or the Arabs for its oil?”
Losing the important Baku-Ceyhan fight might trigger a decline in Israel’s power in Washington.
Depending on just how much oil and gas are in the Caspian region, a pipeline could go south via Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. In present circumstances such a pipeline is no longer a wild idea. Alternatively, oil and gas pipelines might run across Kazakhstan’s broad expanses to neighboring China.
Kazakhstan’s offshore (Caspian) Kashagan oil field seems—repeat, seems —to be larger than Tengiz. The Phillips Petroleum Company, which has an interest in Kashagan, declines to speculate on the field’s recoverable potential, and corroborated to the Washington Report a recent article in London’s Financial Times that a public announcement can be expected at the end of this year.
“However, it is clear by now, Watson, that more pipeline will be needed to get the Caspian region’s oil and gas to salt water,” Holmes might continue. “Nazarbayef’s favoring the Iran route has a profound effect on ‘the’ pipeline. Whether he reiterated his desire to President Bush in Washington last month, is not known. But it seems reasonable he did. The Washington Post didn’t mention it, but that may mean nothing except that the Post would want to avoid mentioning an Iranian oil pipeline route that Israel opposes.”
Israel tricked President Bush in his first months in office last year. The new president had wanted only a two-year extension of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), the 1996 Israel-inspired law calling for U.S. sanctions against companies spending as much as $20 million on Iran/Libya’s oil and gas industry. Bush seems to have been ready to dump ILSA when the two years expired. When the president’s attention was diverted elsewhere, however, the congressional component of the Israel-First cabal pushed through the five-year extension.
Nevertheless, a new pipeline now brings natural gas from Turkmenistan into northern Iran. The U.S. tried, in line with ILSA, to lean on Turkmenistan not to build the line, but Washington’s “leaning” was ignored. The existence of that pipeline, however, now has dropped down English novelist and essayist George Orwell’s “memory hole,” an American repository for embarrassing facts about U.S. relations with Israel.
“But ‘the’ pipeline to keep your eye on, Watson,” Holmes would suggest, “is Baku-Ceyhan, the one Israel simply must have to prove to Turkey that Ankara’s alliance with Tel Aviv pays big dividends in Washington. But the stars are perversely refusing to line up for Israel.”
The oil companies—American and others—involved in the Caspian oppose Baku (Azerbaijan)-Ceyhan (Turkey) because it is too long, too expensive and will have to traverse dissident Kurdish areas, at an extra cost of $1 billion to $2 billion more than a route through Iran. The Turks say they will pay the additional cost. All that means, however, is that the U.S. will have to pick up the extra tab, since everybody knows it’s the Israel-First cabal that pushes Washington to finance Israeli ventures that conflict with U.S. interests. Another rhetorical question asked by Washington Petroleum Finance Company oil consultants was, “Who runs American foreign policy?”
“Where’s the Oil?”
So the stars keep asking, “Where is the extra oil coming from?” Azerbaijan itself still has “disappointing” amounts of oil, a recurring word in reports on Caspian region oil. Despite apparent oil riches in the northern portion of the Sea itself, the southern part seems, so far, to have little.
These two physical realities—not much oil in Azerbaijan and not much in the Caspian’s southern reaches—have major negative implications for Baku- Ceyhan. To get Kazakh oil over to the Baku “oil head,” an onshore pipeline would have to be built from the Tengiz-Kashagan area down to Aktau, an ice-free town on the Caspian western shore of Kazakhstan. From Aktau an undersea line then would have to be constructed to carry oil to Baku.
Looking south from Aktau to a mainly onshore pipeline to Iran obviously looks better than Baku-Ceyhan in Astara’s eyes, and that’s what Kazakhstan has decided it wants. Arrayed against the physical realities and Kazakhstan’s wishes are the cabal’s forces in Congress, the media and inside the Bush administration itself, especially in the Pentagon. They are determined to see Baku-Ceyhan realized, both to prove Israel’s worth to Turkey, and out of fear that losing the important Baku-Ceyhan fight might trigger a decline in Israel’s power in Washington.
“So you see, Watson,” our hero would conclude, “Baku-Ceyhan is the central clue in this era’s Great Caspian Sea Oil Pipeline Game. It’s elementary, really.”
Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.