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Playing for high stakes in oil-rich Caspian region

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  • Playing for high stakes in oil-rich Caspian region

    Playing for high stakes in oil-rich Caspian region

    Irish Times; May 27, 2006
    Kieran Cooke

    World View: Badri Balakhadze points to the freshly dug ground a few
    metres from his farmhouse high up in the Caucasus mountains in the
    Republic of Georgia.

    "Pipelines under the soil are carrying millions of dollars worth of
    oil and gas from the Caspian in the East to Europe in the West," he
    says. "The fuel threatens our villages and the pipelaying has
    destroyed our lands. Yet we don't get one cent - it's as if we don't
    exist."

    More than a century ago Rudyard Kipling and others talked about the
    "Great Game" in Central Asia - the spying and sparring between Tsarist
    Russia and the British Empire for control of the region. Now a new
    Great Game is being played out in the area - an increasingly tense
    battle for resources, in particular vast energy reserves lying beneath
    the Caspian Sea and below the inhospitable desert lands of surrounding
    territories.

    The oil pipeline close to Mr Balakhadze's house is part of one of the
    world's biggest and most daring engineering projects, a 1,757km energy
    link between the Caspian and the Mediterranean, snaking its way over
    valleys and mountains from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, via
    Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey's southern
    coast. Just to fill a pipeline of such length will take up to five
    months. An adjacent gas pipeline links the Caspian with the Black Sea
    coast.

    The aim of western oil giants, led by BP and heavily backed by the
    financial and political muscle of the US and British governments, is
    to transport ever increasing amounts of precious Caspian energy
    through the pipelines to hungry western markets, avoiding routes
    through Iran to the south and Russia to the north.

    However, as the search for the world's dwindling supply of fossil
    fuels intensifies, others are determined that the West will not have
    it all its own way in the Caspian region.

    China has mounted a diplomatic and economic onslaught in the area in
    an effort to gain a large slice of energy resources for its booming
    economy.

    Iran, which controls the Caspian's southern shore, watches
    developments closely, sending out gunships and fighter jets when it
    feels its rights are under threat.

    "The scramble to exploit the Caspian's energy reserves is a
    high-stakes game in what is a very volatile region," says a political
    analyst based in Tbilisi.

    "To some the Caspian is the new El Dorado but it could easily become a
    conflict zone. All the ingredients for trouble are there, with old
    ethnic quarrels unresolved and, since the collapse of the Soviet
    Union, new arguments over territorial boundaries in the area."

    A resurgent Russia, flush with funds from its own enormous energy
    resources, is keen to regain economic and political influence in a
    region that it has long regarded as its own backyard.

    Georgia, a former Soviet satellite which has turned firmly pro-West in
    recent years and is a key transit territory for Caspian energy going
    to the West, has been a particular target of pressure from Moscow.
    Russia recently banned, on health grounds, all imports of Georgian
    wine and mineral water in what Georgia's president, Mikhail
    Saakashvili, described as an act of "economic sabotage".

    Earlier this year, in the middle of the coldest winter on record, a
    mysterious explosion severed the pipeline carrying Russian gas to
    Georgia: most of the country's four million people froze for a week.

    The newly independent, post-Soviet states which share the Caspian's
    waters argue with each other over territorial rights. Corruption and
    human-rights abuses are common features of the region.

    Turkmenistan, on the Caspian's eastern shore, is presided over by
    Saparmurat Niyazov or, as he likes to be called, Turkmenbashi - the
    father of all Turkmen - an eccentric megalomaniac with a penchant for
    littering his country with gold statues of himself and who recently
    decreed that the days of the week should be renamed after members of
    his family.

    Niyazov has effectively sealed Turkmenistan off from contact with the
    rest of the world - except, that is, for carrying on lucrative energy
    deals with foreign energy companies.

    Azerbaijan, where BP and other oil companies have invested billions in
    recent years, is growing rich.

    But while Ferraris and Maseratis buzz round the streets of Baku, many
    people live in caves on the city outskirts. Opposition politicians
    were beaten up and imprisoned during elections in Azerbaijan last
    year. The government has earmarked increasing amounts of its new oil
    wealth to building up its armed forces for a possible clash with
    Armenia, its old enemy and next-door neighbour.

    This is the second energy rush to hit the Caspian. In the mid-19th
    century the world's first commercially exploited oilfields started
    production near Baku.

    By 1900, the region was producing more than 50 per cent of the globe's
    oil.

    Business tycoons like the Rothschilds and the Swedish Nobel family
    made staggering amounts of money out of Caspian oil, building lavish
    mansions in an area of Baku still known as "Boom Town". The rise of
    communism brought the boom to an end in the early years of the 20th
    century.

    Badri Balakhadze and his fellow farmers in the mountains of Georgia
    are dismissive about the talk of energy wealth. They are more worried
    about the threat of landslides in the area and what would happen if an
    earthquake struck - most of Georgia is in a highly active seismic
    zone.

    "The Georgian government gets money from BP for the pipelines, but not
    us," says Mr Balakhadze.

    "We weren't even given any jobs on the project - they were all given
    to outsiders. Our village is dying but no one seems to care. What use
    is the oil and gas to us?"
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