The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Another move in the Great Game

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Friday, May 27, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Another move in the Great Game

Vladimir Radyuhin

The BTC pipeline is part of a wider U.S. plan to isolate Russia.

THE LAUNCHING of a trans-Caucasus oil pipeline on Wednesday marked a new round in the Great Game between the United States and Russia for control of the Caspian and Central Asia.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is a key element in the U.S. strategy to redraw the geopolitical map of the former Soviet Union and supersede Russia as a dominant force in the former Soviet Union. The U.S. has pushed through the project over more profitable pipelines via Russia and Iran to create an alternative export route for oil produced in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which have so far depended on Russian pipelines to export their oil to Europe.

The $4-billion BTC pipeline, built by a multinational consortium led by British oil giant BP, can carry over one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan across the Caucasian mountains through Georgia to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey. A gas pipeline running parallel to the oil pipe is to be completed next year.

Russian objections

Russia has strongly opposed the BTC pipeline, claiming it was a political, rather than an economic project. "We believe that this pipeline is economically inexpedient," a Russian government source was quoted as saying. "Its rated capacity is 60 million tonnes of oil a year, but there is outlook for no more than 28 million tonnes of oil, and only half of it has been tapped so far."

The economic and political success of the U.S.-sponsored project depends on whether Kazakhstan will contribute significant amounts of oil for the pipe. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan was in Baku to inaugurate the pipeline but stopped short of signing — as expected — an agreement on joining the BTC pipeline.

The BTC pipeline is part of a wider U.S. plan to set up a security structure for the region alternative to the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation led by Russia and China.

Under its Caspian Guard programme, the U.S. plans to deploy troops in the region under a trilateral alliance with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to provide joint military security for the BTC pipeline and the Caspian. At a later stage the alliance may incorporate Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey, but lock out Russia.

This axis, together with the U.S.-promoted GUUAM alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova, will enable Washington to exercise control over an absolute majority of post-Soviet states and create a cordone sanitaire around Russia.

Russia, which boycotted the BTC inauguration, has voiced strong objections to the Caspian Guard plan. "Russia will always oppose the presence of any foreign military contingents within the boundaries of the CIS," head of the Russian upper house international committee Mikhail Margelov said commenting on the launching of the BTC pipeline. "First and foremost, it is a question of [Russia's] national security. Foreign military presence in the region would look especially strange against the background of the coming pullout of Russian bases from Georgia."

United against U.S.

Russia and China are trying to torpedo the U.S. plan by forging close political and economic links with their allies in the former Soviet Union. Moscow and Beijing backed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan over his ruthless suppression of Islamist riots in the Fergana Valley earlier this month. Mr. Karimov has recently been moving away from the U.S., which has an anti-terror airbase in Uzbekistan, and drawing closer to Russia and China. Last month Mr. Karimov withdrew from GUUAM. Over the past year Russian companies have signed multi-billion deals to develop Uzbekistan's oil and gas fields.

The day the BTC pipeline was launched Mr. Karimov was in Beijing to sign a friendship treaty and a spate of contracts providing for $1.5-billion Chinese investment in its gas and oil industry. China is also building a 10-million-tonne oil pipeline from Kazakhstan.

Russia is negotiating with Kazakhstan a long-term programme for carrying the bulk of Kazakh export oil via the Moscow-dominated Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) till the year 2020. Kazakhstan, which produced 45 million tonnes of oil last year, pumped 32 million tons for export via the CPC pipeline running from northern Caspian across Russia to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk.

It is planned to expand the CPC capacity to 60 million tonnnes by 2015. Last month Russia, Bulgaria and Greece signed a $677-million agreement to build a trans-Balkan pipeline that will carry 35 million tonnes of Russian and Kazakh oil to the Mediterranean bypassing Turkey's crowded Bosporus strait.

President Nazarbayev said last year that Russia was a "priority transit route for Kazakh oil."

While the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is a major success for U.S. diplomacy, the Great Game is just unfolding and its outcome is far from clear.

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