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Caspian
Oil Pipeline Issues |
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Oil and Gas in the Caspian Sea Basin Whenever any part of a country wants secede, the major problem is always how the smaller group of people will fare economically. In the case of the countries in the southwestern part of the former Soviet Union, in the Caspian Sea region, the answer to this economic problem has been oil and gas. In 1986, the USSR was by far the world's largest producer of natural gas, accounting for more than 50% of total global production. It was also the largest producer of oil in the world, though its reserves ranked third behind Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In 1993, Russia was still the world's largest gas producer, but its oil production had fallen and its reserves were ranked behind Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Mexico. However, recent discoveries in the Caspian Sea region have suggested oil reserves that may be the largest in the world outside of the Persian Gulf and the Pechora/West Siberia field in northwestern Russia. Some experts have predicted that the capacity of these reserves might eventually rival that of the Persian Gulf. Foreign investment in the area has been huge, with billions of dollars being invested in both Kazakstan and Azerbaijan and smaller projects underway in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, and Georgia. Funds from oil investments are seen by some of these republics as a path toward independence from Moscow. While the reserves look promising, problems remain. Debate is still raging over the path that should be taken by the pipeline for transporting the oil from the Caspian Sea to overseas markets. At present there are two proposed routes. A northern route would go from Baku in Azerbaijan through Grozny in Chechenya continue to Novorossiysk on the Black Sea coast of southern Russia. A southern route would go from Baku west to Georgia, and then could either continue to a terminal on the Black Sea coast of Georgia or head south through Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Other alternatives suggested include a Russian plan to continue the northern pipeline through Bulgaria and into Greece, bypassing the Bosphorus altogether, and a route connecting Azerbaijani pipelines with those in existence in Iran. International politics have made the pipeline decision a difficult debate. Further north, in the central Asian country of Kazakstan, an agreement was signed in September 1997 for oil to be piped to Xinjiang, the remote province in northwestern China. This deal, worth $10 billion, may signal the beginning of a realignment of some of the central Asian republics. A few, like Kazakstan, are already turning away from Moscow and the Russian Federation toward their neighbors in China, Pakistan, and Iran.
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"Russia" is inspired by programs from The Power of Place: World
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