Late last year, the flagship venture TengizChevrOil (TCO) took the unusual step of holding its board meeting in Almaty and voting to suspend the next stage (planned at $3 billion) in the project’s development. A number of explanations filtered out … Continue reading →
Fall-out continues from the Shah Deniz gas find offshore from Azerbaijan. Several weeks ago, part one of this series examined developments around the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) from Turkmenistan, and Iran’s problems with Turkmenistani gas imports. The evident withdrawal of … Continue reading →
The one formal organization is the Central Asian Economic Union which includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The leaders of these countries have concluded several agreements on expanding economic cooperation, but these will remain a dead letter until the Uzbek … Continue reading →
For much of the period since the November 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul, this column has principally discussed developments concerning the Baku-Ceyhan main export pipeline (MEP). I wish to shift gears here for an extended review of recent events related … Continue reading →
The signing of the Istanbul Protocol on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline at the recent OSCE meeting was highly important politically to the leaders who signed it. But the project will in the long run be more important to the peoples of … Continue reading →
The problem the AIOC has in the short term is the opposite of the one that everyone has been talking about in the long term. In the long term, the general opinion is that there will be a problem is … Continue reading →
Transit of oil through the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline continues to be a problematic affair. Since the beginning of the month, the pipeline has been shut down three times. The reasons given are the age of the Russian section of the pipeline … Continue reading →
The military operations in the Balkans affect the calculations concerning export routes, via Kosovo Caspian energy. The near-term regional effect of the hostilities in Kosovo is to make the Baku-Ceyhan line slightly more likely. This is not to deny the … Continue reading →
The new year has already established two new trends in Caspian Sea geo-economics and BTC pipeline politics as well as confirmed an old one. Two important new trends are an improvement in Turkmenistan’s finances and the refusal of BTC pipeline … Continue reading →
With the dismantlement of the inherited Soviet nuclear arsenal now under way, it is the apparent lack of well defined long-term goals (apart from “stability”) that largely account for Washington’s inability to clarify the nature of its engagement in Central Asia, leading it to deal with immediate issues (such as the Tajikistan situation) on a piecemeal basis. There are, however, at least two key areas of central Asian concern (not counting the burgeoning drug trade or the Tajikistan civil war) that directly engage “vital” U.S. interests. These areas are nuclear nonproliferation and energy security.
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