Entries from Robert M. Cutler on Energy and Eurasia tagged with 'BTC'
BP set to remain in the Caspian
Embattled oil giant BP, which is looking for ways to meet bills arising from the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, has numerous assets it could sell to meet its obligations, but reports that these could include Caspian...
Nekünk Azerbajdzsán kell
Robert M. Cutler amerikai politológus-tanácsadó szerint a közép-európai országoknak muszáj együttműködniük az orosz befolyás csökkentéséért. Az oroszok a gázt politikai fegyverként használják, és a nagy nemzetközi vezetékekért folyó küzdelem akár fegyveres konfliktusok kitörésében is szerepet játszik. Az azeri gázmezők válthatják...
Nabucco spurs Caspian projects
Energy conferences in the Caspian Sea region have come so fast and furious in recent years that some industry and government figures consider them a dime a dozen. In fact, the organizers are sometimes the ones who draw most advantage...
Трубопровод Nabucco подстегивает каспийские проекты
Энергетические конференции в регионе Каспийского моря в последние годы сменяют друг друга с такой головокружительной скоростью, что некоторые представители отрасли и правительственные чиновники перестали относиться к ним серьезно. Правда, иногда сами организаторы получают от них больше пользы, если принимать во...
Turkey strengthens Iraqi energy ties
Turkey last week strengthened its energy ties with Iraq by renewing a contract to import Iraqi oil to the Turkish Mediterranean Sea port of Ceyhan, where Azerbaijani oil also arrives via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Earlier this year, it was...
Ukraine poll may deliver oil to Europe
Ukraine's run-off election between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and rival Viktor Yanukovych, to be held on Sunday, may decide the future of a pipeline that could be used to deliver Caspian Sea oil to Europe, bypassing both Russia and Turkey....
Caspian Diplomacy Should Intensify
For over 15 years the U.S. has worked to promote cooperation over energy issues among the newly independent states in the Caspian Sea region. A proclaimed goal of U.S. energy policy in the region since the early 1990s has been...
Kaspickú diplomaciu je nutné zintenzívniť
UE; viac ako 15 rokov sa Spojené štáty usilujú zintenzívniť kooperáciu medzi nezávislými krajinami kaspického regiónu v oblasti energetiky. Od začiatku 90. rokov je cieľom americkej energetickej politiky zabezpečiť, aby tieto krajiny nezáviseli len od jednej vývoznej trasy, ktorá by...
Azerbaijan and Turkey clash over energy
In all the debate and speculation over the various pipelines planned for the Caspian-South Caucasus corridor and adjacent regions (Nabucco, South Stream, White Stream, and Trans-Caspian Gas Pipelines in addition to various oil pipeline projects), the troubled state of energy...
Қазақстан туралы шет елдерден келіп түскен күнделікті жаңалықтар
«Asia Times Online» басылымының авторы Роберт М.Катлер (Robert M Cutler) қазанның 10-ы күні «Kazakhstan points route out of crisis» атты мақала жариялап, соңғы уақытта біздің еліміздің халықаралық деңгейде үлкен саяси-экономикалық маңызы бар шешімдерге қол жеткізіп, дағдарыстан шығар жолды көрсеткені туралы...
Казахстан указывает на путь выхода из кризиса
Визит президента Франции Николя Саркози в Казахстан для подписания сделки по трубопроводу ознаменовал собой неделю, на которой произошло два других важных события (в том числе новый подход к реструктурированию банка), "отслеживающие", как страна, приведенная в боевую готовность, стремится преодолеть экономический...
Kazakhstan points route out of crisis
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Kazakhstan for the signing of an energy pipeline deal marked a week that included two other significant events, including a novel approach to bank restructuring, that trace how the embattled country is seeking to...
Американский эксперт: В обозримом будущем энергетические потоки со стороны Каспия будут проходить в обход Армении
АрмИнфо. В обозримом будущем энергетические потоки со стороны Каспия будут проходить в обход Армении. Такое мнение высказал сегодня журналистам эксперт по Южному Кавказу и Центральной Азии, профессор Мичиганского университета Роберт Катлер, выступая в Институте Кавказа в Ереване....
Американский ученый не считает вероятным участие Aрмении в проекте газопровода «Набукко»
В самом деле попросту американский ученый, однозначно научный работник Института европейских, отечественных и евразийских изысканий Университета Карлтон Роберт Катлер не считает потенциальным роль Армении в плане газопровода «Набукко»....
Серьёзные ставки в переговорах о газопроводах
Фридрих Энгельс писал, что исторические события зачастую представляют собой «нежелательный результат» различных импульсов в «параллелограмме сил»....
Роберт Катлер: 'Очень многое зависит от погоды'
This article is the Russian translation (from http://www.inomsi.ru) of the Bulgarian translation (from 24 Часа [Sofia]) of the Georgian translation (from
"Набукко" нужно воспринимать как реальный проект
советует научный сотрудник института исследований канадского университета Карлтон Роберт Катлер....
Robert Katler: “Rusiya ilə Ukrayna arasındakı münasibətlər Avropanı Azərbaycanla enerji sahəsində əməkdaşlığa daha çox diqqət ayırmasına sövq edir”
Bu gün Azərbaycan Prezidenti Yanında Strateji Araşdırmalar Mərkəzi “Genişlənmiş Qara dəniz hövzəsi regionunda Azərbaycanın enerji strategiyasına geosiyasi amillərin təsiri” mövzusunda dəyirmi masa keçirib. SİA-nın məlumatına görə, tədbirdə əsas məruzəçi Kanadanın Karlton Universitetinin Avropa, Rusiya və Avrasiya tədqiqatları institutunun baş elmi...
Эксперт по евразийской политике: «США высоко ценят проводимую Азербайджаном независимую политику»
Азербайджан является важнейшим звеном в транзите каспийской нефти на европейские рынки, отметил в ходе встречи с журналистами старший научный сотрудник Карлтонского университета, известный эксперт по евразийской политике профессор Роберт Катлер....
Azərbaycan müstəqil enerji diplomatiyası yürüdür
News article (interview) first published in Yeni Azərbaycan (Baku), 30 September 2009.
Канадский эксперт: «Набукко» - более реалистичный проект, чем «Южный поток»
«Набукко» нужно воспринимать как реальный проект. Об этом в Центре стратегических исследований при Президенте Азербайджана во время «круглого стола» на тему «Влияние геополитических факторов на энергетическую стратегию Азербайджана в Каспийско-Черноморском регионе» заявил научный сотрудник института исследований Европы, России и Евразии...
Four-way street in Kazakhstan
The presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan ended their meeting in Kazakhstan's resort city of Kenderly last weekend with its purpose and consequences as clear as distant figures in an early autumn mist. Two elements did emerge more clearly...
The Caspian boils again
Iran expects to deploy its first deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig in the Caspian Sea next month, following the conclusion that the country's shallow-water sector has no exploitable resources, according to hydrocarbon energy industry sources....
Nabucco ink starts to flow
The signing this week of a transit agreement to govern the Nabucco natural gas pipeline marks an important staging post in bringing to reality the long-touted energy route, which is projected to run 3,300 kilometers from the Caspian Sea region...
Nabucco is still alive
In a 1955 essay in The Economist, British historian C Northcote Parkinson formulated the now well-known "law" forever after eponymously associated with him, that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Another of his aphorisms,...
Azerbaijan can look the other way
Azerbaijan, for two decades a reliable energy supplier for the West, may reconsider that "partnership" as Europe drags its feet over the proposed Nabucco pipeline and the Caspian country sees its hope that it could eventually join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization extinguished.
Азербайджан может отвернуться в другую сторону
Более ста лет назад сэр Халфорд Макиндер (Halford Mackinder) произнес знаменитые слова о том, что территории к востоку и северу от Каспийского моря могут стать "географической осью истории", выдвигая свою геополитическую теорию о евразийском "центре мира". Этот термин сейчас в...
Turkey risks gas bypass
Turkey is continuing to make unacceptable demands for the transit of Azerbaijani gas across its territory as part of the Nabucco pipeline project. That is unlikely to keep that gas from reaching Europe in the long run. The Turkish government...
Reality wins over energy grand design
The re-eruption of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia over payments for gas deliveries illustrates that developments in Eurasian energy geo-economics do not take vacations, even over the New Year holidays. The Ukrainian-Russian dispute, for example, takes place in circumstances...
Euro-Caspian energy plans inch forward
Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR and Kazakhstan's state monopoly KazMunaiGaz this month signed an agreement setting out the main principles for a transport system to convey Kazakhstani oil across the Caspian Sea for entry into the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and...
Türkiye’nin İşi Zor
Türkiye’nin ekonomik ve siyasi gerçekleri tek başına, piyasalardaki yaz canlanmasının canına okurdu. Rusya’nın Türkiye’nin arka kapısı Gürcistan’ı işgali de bunu kesinleştirdi....
Turkey has a rough road ahead
The realities of Turkey's economy and politics would alone have killed off the summer revival in the country's stock markets. Russia's invasion of Georgia, on Turkey's back doorstep, made sure....
Oil in troubled mountains
The armed conflict between Russian and Georgia has further exposed the fragile position of the energy links running through the smaller country from the Caspian Sea to developed market economies...
Kashagan Leads Kazakhstan To Increase Trans-Caspian Oil Exports
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have culminated years-long negotiations with agreements that increase the amounts of Kazakhstani oil to be shipped across the Caspian Sea, supplementing Azerbaijani crude in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Still more significant, redevelopment and expansion of ports on...
Azerbaijani Gas Again on the Front Burner
Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliev has announced a doubling of the reserves of both oil and gas in his country’s Caspian offshore. New finds in as many of five fields to be developed contain perhaps 50 trillion cubic feet of gas,...
A New Chance for the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline?
A significant indicator of Turkmenistan's future diplomatic and economic course is whether new President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov will undertake a rapprochement with Azerbaijan....
Energy Security for Turkey Is Energy Security for Others
A geopolitical and geo-economic inventory of Turkey's assets in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century reveals such strengths, beyond its military capa-bilities and other state institutions, as industry, population, and, above all, geographic lo-cation. These are...
The Sources and Regions of Crisis in the Caucasus
Public speech invited at the International Symposium Examination of the Regions of Crisis from the Perspectives of Turkey, NATO and the European Union, and the Impacts of These Crises on the Security of Turkey, organized by the Strategic Research and...
Kazakhstan's Economic Promise Revisited
Real GDP fell throughout the first half of the 1990s in all newly independent states, declining by about half in Kazakhstan. The country was also adversely affected towards the end of the decade by the Asian and Russian crises as...
Kazakhstan’s Search for Export Pipelines
In late March, Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Kasymzhomart Tokaev turned the tap at the Tengiz field to begin filling a pipeline built by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). This 1,580-kilometer pipeline was built to take oil from Tengiz (estimated to hold...
Do all roads lead to Ashgabat?
The recent summit of Turkic-language countries in Ankara provided Turkmenistan's President Saparmurad Niyazov with the opportunity to insist yet again that his country and his person are central, if not key, to the resolution of major problems in the region....
New Configurations around the Caspian Sea (4/4)
The selection several weeks ago of Italy's ENI as operator of the Offshore Kazakhstan International Operating Company (OKIOC), which is exploring the vast Kashagan deposit offshore from Kazakhstan, came as a surprise to most observers. Eni was a dark horse...
New Configurations around the Caspian Sea (3/4)
The current, contradictory phase of events around the Caspian is captured by the difficult realism of Viktor Kalyuzhnyi, Russia's deputy foreign minister, who also serves as President Vladimir Putin's special envoy on Caspian affairs. As developments continue to accelerate, Russia...
New Configurations around the Caspian (2/4)
Significant events that will determine the fate of a number of Caspian export pipelines have continued to occur in rapid succession, even as the government of Turkmenistan made a surprise announcement postponing a long-awaited summit among Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, Turkmenistan...
Just What Is "GUUAM" Anyway?
Views differ on the significance and future of the Georgia-Ukraine-Uzbekistan-Azerbaijan-Moldova grouping. Any real effects on energy transport will come through practical measures implemented in specific sectors. This would require greater emphasis on interparliamentary cooperation.
A Frosty New Year in the Caspian Region
The beginning of the year 2001 has seen a re-inauguration of economic and political warfare over the production, distribution and consumption of natural gas in the greater Caspian region. On the first day of the year, Turkmenistan stopped exporting gas...
How Shah-Deniz Is Changing the Equation (8/9)
In my most recent installment in this series, I indicated that recent developments pointed towards the need to review Turkmenistan's options for export of its natural gas. That is the subject of this article....
Как России завоевать Европу
Между Россией и Европейским Союзом (ЕС) идет серия переговоров о новых соглашениях на долгосрочные поставки российских энергоносителей. Европа хочет заручиться гарантией значительного увеличения поставок нефти и газа из России на длительную перспективу. Имеющиеся транспортные магистрали справиться с дополнительным потоком энергоносителей не смогут. Строительство новых трубопроводов, в которых заинтересованы и Россия, и Европа, потребует значительного финансирования. Оно должно придти из Европы. Обсуждаемая формула "энергоносители за инвестиции" сможет работать только при наличии в стране ясной законодательной базы. Первым эффективным шагом России в этом направлении может стать ратификация Договора к Энергетической Хартии.
Russia and Europe's Energy Strategy
Reports have recently circulated of an agreement between Russia and the European Union (EU) for long-term energy sales. Europe wants more Russian oil and gas, but this does not mean that it will not continue to seek oil and gas...
How Shah-Deniz is changing the equation (7/9)
The article examines once more the results of the Shah-Deniz find for the Russia-Turkmenistan-Ukraine triangle. It first dissects the most recent developments in their interactions over energy supplies and policy. It then examines the question of what the Russian contract...
How Shah-Deniz Is Changing the Equation (3/9)
China has declared ownership of its planned pipeline from Xinjiang to Shanghai open to foreign entities. This follows President Jiang Zemin's visit to Turkmenistan, where he discussed the possibility of a pipeline to carry natural gas from that country across...
Russia, Turkey and Iran: An Eternal Triangle
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...
Caspian energy pipelines: Towards a self-organizing network?
One of the properties of increasingly networked relationships is that they seem to begin to take on a life of their own. The word "self-organization" is used for describing this. In the evolution of networks, events can occur that seem...
Russia and Central Asia: Playing the Turkmenistan Card
Russian President Vladimir Putin just spent the weekend of May 19-21 in Ashgabat where he reached an agreement in principle to increase Russian gas purchases from Turkmenistan. It is yet another indicator of Russia's renewed interest in Central Asia since...
Solving the Problems of Caspian Industrial Infrastructure (2/2)
Three weeks ago I began describing part of the industrial infrastructure problem in the Caspian region. Limitations of physical geography require relative self-sufficiency in the development of basic infrastructure and installation of production facilities. The amount of investment required to...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (7/7)
It was announced recently that Georgia will sign this week a host government agreement with private investors in the oil pipeline pipeline from the Azeri capital Baku, through the Georgian capital Tbilisi to the Turkish Black Sea port of Ceyhan....
Solving the Problems of Caspian Industrial Infrastructure (1/2)
This week I begin a new, short series on an issue that few people talk about and fewer people do anything about. This is the industrial infrastructure problem. It is already clear that problems of energy development in the Caspian...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (6/7)
This article continues a series begun late last year as an analysis of the then-accelerating negotiations that led to the initialling of agreements on the Baku-Ceyhan main export pipeline (MEP) at the OSCE's mid-November summit in Istanbul. There were four...
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan Untie the Caspian Gas Knot
In mid-February, Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov rejected a proposal to split equally with Azerbaijan exports of natural gas through the proposed Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) with a projected volume of 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year. The contract to...
The Trans-Caspian and Blue Stream Pipelines: Turkey's Place in the Big Picture
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...
Negotiations Proceed on the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline
In mid-January, the first multilateral meeting of parties interested in the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP), which will carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey, was held in Ashgabat. It included the countries concerned, parties to the TCGP consortium that will...
Azerbaijan vs. Turkmenistan: The Caspian Offshore Oil and Gas Conflict
[Note: This article was written after Turkmenistan has agreed to resolve a territorial dispute, before it subsequently reversed that decision.] The territorial dispute over the Kyapaz/Serdar offshore oilfield that was a major stumbling block to the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline agreement, no...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (5/7)
This week's column continues the discussion, begun last year, of the Baku-Ceyhan main export pipeline (MEP) accords initialled in Istanbul during the November OSCE summit. Although none of these agreements has yet been published, their outline and some of their...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (4/7)
This column continues the series on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline agreements and their fall-out. Previous articles discussed the cost guarantee agreement, the Main Export Pipeline (MEP) agreement itself, and the agreement between investors and transit states. This week, I wish to...
Javakhetia: Flashpoint or Bottleneck?
This commentary provides background on Javakhetia, the ethnically Armenian region in southern Georgia, in order to establish that is not the next Karabakh and not another Abkhazia, and therefore neither flashpoint nor bottleneck for oil pipelines crossing the Caucasus from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Stability in Javakhetia is likely to continue, although in the long term there is a wild card: the Meskhetian Turks, a people deported by Stalin whose has been mandated to their homeland, which lies west of Javakhetia proper and east of Ajaria.
Instability in the Balance: The Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline
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...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (3/7)
Part one of this series, published after BP-Amoco made an announcement in support of the Baku-Ceyhan Main Export Pipeline (MEP), reviewed the background to that decision and its implications with regard to the four agreements being negotiated between Turkey and...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (2/7)
This week’s commentary continues the analysis begun last week, of the terms and prospects for agreement on construction of the Baku-Ceyhan main export pipeline (MEP). The column last week discussed two of the four agreements being negotiated: the MEP agreement...
Just When You Thought Baku-Ceyhan Was Dead and Buried (1/7)
In mid-June, I wrote that "if and when construction begins on Baku-Ceyhan, it will be due to a major shift in a variable whose immutability everyone now takes for granted." Construction has not yet begun, but such a variable has...
Kazakhstan and International Energy Development (2/4)
Three weeks ago, the first article in this series discussed how the economic and physical geography of Kazakhstan has constrained and conditioned President Nursultan Nazarbaev's choices for export routes for Tengiz oil. It gave a series of reasons why the...
The AIOC Has a Problem but Not the One You Think
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...
Tengiz Oil in Search of a Pipeline
At the end of this summer, the Kazakhstani government is scheduled to reach a decision on the export route for Tengiz oil. Of course, in the AIOC main-export-pipeline tradition, it could decide to postpone the decision. Still, it is instructive...
Baku Continues at the Center of Negotiations
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...
Tariff Competition in the Caucasus and a Test Case for Reform in Iran
Competition among export pipeline companies in the Caucasus is heating up, even while the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline project remains on at least temporary hold. As predicted here some time ago, transit fees are beginning to play a major role in at...
Kosovo, International Security, and Caspian Energy
The military operations in the Balkans affect the calculations concerning export routes for Caspian oil. The near-term regional effect of the hostilities in Kosovo is to make the Baku-Ceyhan line slightly more likely....
Southwest Asia and the Caspian Region
Iran, Iraq, and Turkey continue to dominate energy developments in Southwest Asia. Most of the people in a hurry to get the energy out of the Caucasus and Central Asia are now the political leaders in the region itself.
Transit Tariffs Come to the Fore
A prospective loosening of investment controls by the OPEC states, formerly most concerned to constrain foreign direct investment, makes it likely that at least some attention will be diverted from the Caspian region to the Arabian peninsula. Both Saudi Arabia...
Kazakhstan between East and West
When Nursultan Nazarbaev was re-elected president of Kazakhstan earlier this month, there was little surprise in the West and some disappointment. The disappointment was not that he won the election—the result was never really in doubt—but rather that he held...
Ring in the Old, Ring in the New!
The new year has already established two new trends in Caspian Sea geo-economics as well as confirmed an old one. Two important new trends are an improvement in Turkmenistan's finances and the refusal of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to vanish from...
Москва рискует изоляцию от Кавказа
Корреспондент "НГ" Игорь Ротарь в своей статье "Чеченские проекты получают международную поддержку" обратил внимание на новые аспекты кавказской политики, значение которых трудно переоценить. Речь идет об инициативах одного из чеченских лидеров Хожахмеда Нухаева по созданию "Общего рынка Кавказ - Евразия",...
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