President Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan publicly endorsed the Nabucco natural gas pipeline earlier this month, then criticized Europe for putting too much talk into the project and not enough action....
Turkmenistan has broken Russia’s stranglehold on its gas exports by opening a pipeline through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China. The country’s president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has just made his first trip to New Delhi where the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline project...
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...
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...
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...
Events this week confirm that Turkmenistan has taken a decisive strategic decision to diversify its gas exports not only beyond Russia but also beyond China....
Эксклюзивное интервью 1news.az с профессором Института европейских, российских и евразийских исследований Карлетонского университета (Канада), Роберт Катлером (Robert Cutler)....
As you know, Europeans with an interest in energy affairs get very excited when discussing the source of the gas they’ll in 5-10 years. Especially in Italy, where Berlusconi’s center-right government is openly defying EU policy on the matter and...
An anonymous but highly placed representative of the Azerbaijan state oil company, SOCAR, confided to Trend News Agency in Baku last week that agreement has been reached with Turkey concerning the price of Azerbaijani gas and its transit through Turkish...
Two events coincided this week to point towards further complications in Euro-Caspian energy geo-economics. Azerbaijan has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Georgia and Romania to promote liquefied natural gas (LNG) transportation across the Black Sea, and has separately...
Ukraine's new government, formed by President Viktor Yanukovych after he was inaugurated in March, this week affirmed that the country's gas transportation network is for sale to no one, including Russian gas monopoly Gazprom. At the same time, Russia has...
Statements by Azerbaijani and Turkish diplomats indicate that the two sides have reached an agreement in principle concerning the price that Turkey will pay for gas from the offshore Shah Deniz deposit for its own domestic consumption. With these signals,...
Viktor Yanukovych came first in the presidential elections in Ukraine, but Yuliya Tymoshenko has instructed lawyers to bring to the courts evidence of voting irregularities to put Yanukovych’s margin of victory under question. Even if the latter is able to...
The opening of the first segment of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline last month is only one in a series of recent events in Caspian Sea basin energy developments. It signifies Turkmenistan’s first real moves to break its dependence upon Gazprom...
With the entry of Iraq into the mix of potential suppliers of natural gas for the Nabucco pipeline to Europe and the proliferation of alternative supply lines beyond the Russian-sponsored rival South Stream pipeline, the "classical" variant of the Nabucco...
В том, что касается разработки и использования энергоресурсов бассейна Каспийского моря, Китай постепенно превращается в игрока, с которым приходится считаться. Вкупе с давно сложившимся пересечением региональных интересов России, Европы и США это должно послужить напоминанием о динамично меняющейся ситуации в...
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...
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...
Prepared remarks to the Wilton Park Conference The South Caucasus and Wider Black Sea Neighbourhood: Regional Developments and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Wiston House, West Sussex (U.K.), 23–26 November 2009. China's emergence as an important player in the development and use of...
An Iranian official's declaration that his country has entered into negotiations with European firms about the supply of natural gas into the Nabucco pipeline intended to supply Europe via Turkey was rejected this week by one of the firms concerned....
В этом месяце были подняты вопросы о том, являются ли на самом деле газовые ресурсы Туркменистана столь огромными, как было установлено в прошлом году английской фирмой "Gaffney Cline & Associates ". "Gaffney Cline & Associates" подтвердила, что новое газовое месторождение...
Questions have been raised this month about whether the gas resources of Turkmenistan are in fact as spectacularly voluminous as verified last year by the British firm, Gaffney Cline & Associates....
«Проект прокладки газопровода по дну Каспия, с восточного берега в Азербайджан – Транскаспийский газопровод, наиболее реальный путь транспортировки среднеазиатского газа на западные рынки». Об этом заявил на встрече с журналистами старший научный сотрудник Карлтонского университета, известный эксперт по евразийской политике...
советует научный сотрудник института исследований канадского университета Карлтон Роберт Катлер....
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....
«Проект прокладки газопровода по дну Каспия, с восточного берега в Азербайджан – Транскаспийский газопровод, наиболее реальный путь транспортировки среднеазиатского газа на западные рынки». Об этом заявил на встрече с журналистами старший научный сотрудник Карлтонского университета, известный эксперт по евразийской политике...
News article (interview) first published in Yeni Azərbaycan (Baku), 30 September 2009.
В 2002 году Тегеран негативно отреагировал на военные маневры России на Каспии и отказался направить на них военных наблюдателей. Теперь ситуация иная. Россия с большими сомнениями относится к энергетическим проектам в регионе, поддерживаемым США. Кроме того, Москва не удовлетворена тем,...
Interview on Caspian energy security, broadcast in Azeri translation from the original English, and also published in Azeri by Azadlıq Radiosu [Radio Liberty] (Baku), 29 September 2009, under the by-line of Arifə Kazımova.
Excerpt from news article (interview) by Turan News Agency (Baku).
Вопрос ограничения доступа Ирана к газовому проекту Набукко вызван недоверием общественности к выполнению этой страной своих обязательств, считает американский эксперт Роберт Катлер.
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...
Robert Cutler, Senior Research Fellow at Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University spoke to Day.Az in an interview. Published under by-line of T. Teymur.
Интервью Т. Теймурa (Day.Az) с канадским ученым, исследователем Института европейских, российских и евразийских учений Карлтонского университета, Робертом Катлером.
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....
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...
Some small fanfare was given to the signature on May 24 between the presidents of Iran and Pakistan of an agreement for the construction of a gas pipeline running from the former's South Pars gas field through the latter's unstable...
The European Union (EU) and Turkey have resolved two major differences that were preventing agreement on the terms for the Nabucco natural gas pipeline, and the Turkish President Abdullah Gul is reported to have promised that a signing ceremony will...
The leaders of Russia and Turkmenistan have been unable to agree on terms for the (re)construction of a Soviet-era gas pipeline in western Turkmenistan. While subsequent negotiations are not excluded, Ashgabat has declared its intent to allow companies other than...
В середине февраля Россия и Китай подписали соглашение, по которому китайские кредитные учреждения выдадут заем в 25 млрд. долларов российским энергетическим компаниям 'Транснефть' и 'Роснефть' в обмен на строительство ответвления нефтепровода 'Восточная Сибирь - Тихий океан' от Сковородино до китайской...
In mid-February, Russia and China signed an agreement providing for Chinese agencies to lend US$25 billion to the Russian energy trusts Transneft and Rosneft in return for the construction of a branch from the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline...
The agreement announced late last month between Russia and China for construction of a pipeline branch to China from the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline is only one aspect of a relatively new strategic policy direction from Beijing to...
Eastern Europe freezes as Brussels fiddles, while with Moscow's help Gazprom extends its grasp of energy production in the Caspian Sea region....
As Russia and China seek to augment their influence over the development of Kazakhstan’s energy production, Astana looks for other routes to overcome the restraints. The reinvigoration since 2007 of prospects for a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) with Turkmenistan's participation...
The crisis over Turkmenistan's gas, transmitted by Russia via Ukraine, demonstrates the need for other energy routes from the Caspian Sea region to Europe....
Corruption and politics in Ukraine threaten to choke off, at least in the near term, the expansion of oil exports from Azerbaijan and eventually Kazakhstan to Europe. This is the significance of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko's efforts in July...
The one-year anniversary of the EU's Partnership Strategy with Central Asia gets off to a slow start but is not without potential....
Ground was broken in Kazakhstan last week for construction of that country's segment of a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China, set to be the longest and most expensive such pipeline in the world - its length is usually...
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,...
Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the EU’s External Relations Commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, during the trip of a very high-level EU delegation to Central Asia, providing for the export of natural gas from Turkmenistan to...
Recent weeks have seen increasing United States activity in favor of constructing the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan. But what are the chances of anything really happening? From the technical standpoint, there is no obstacle....
A significant indicator of Turkmenistan's future diplomatic and economic course is whether new President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov will undertake a rapprochement with Azerbaijan....
When US President George W. Bush was in India this month, he caused a flurry of commentary, especially in the Indian media, by appearing to lift long-standing American objections to the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Iran through...
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 Central Asian Co-operation Organization (CACO, comprising Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and since October 2004 Russia) has taken a decision to meld itself into the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEc, which includes also Belarus and has until now excluded Uzbekistan). CACO,...
The Karachaganak energy field sends gas for processing to a Gazprom plant in Orenburg, Russia. The decision where to process oncoming increased Karachaganak volumes has significant implications for future development of Kazakhstan's national pipeline system.
На минувшей неделе пресса продолжила комментировать итоги недавнего визита президента Путина в Казахстан....
В Евразии происходят глубинные тектонические сдвиги в области обеспечения безопасности и экономического сотрудничества....
The significance of the agreements on energy cooperation achieved during Russian President Vladimir Putin's recently completed visit to Kazakhstan is only an indicator of the consolidation of deeper tectonic shifts in Eurasian security and economic affairs. A new triangle is...
Iran has been seeking since the mid-1990s to undertake oil swaps with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as a way to increase its own exports. Such swaps involve Iran’s importing oil in the north on its Caspian Sea coast for domestic refining...
Central Eurasia, which is what specialists have taken to calling most of the geographic area once covered by the Soviet Union, has a long history of ethnopolitical complications and related struggles focused on collective identities. Tsarist Russia had moderate success...
In late 2000, the EU and Russia began extensive high-level commercial talks about the prospects for European importation of Russian energy resources over the course of coming decades. However, Russia's failure to pursue adequate investment in its natural gas industry...
Before the terrorist acts in New York City, the U.S. looked to be largely absent diplomatically and militarily, while limiting its economic presence to Caspian energy development in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Yet the formation of a U.S.-sponsored ‘global anti-terrorist coalition’...
The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) has sought for nearly a decade to develop for export Azerbaijan’s “Contract of the Century” oil fields, i.e., the major offshore deposits in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli sectors. As it was determined that the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline...
Airstrikes on Afghanistan put U.S. policy in Central Asia in a delicate position. Authoritarian streaks in Central Asian governments may harden, and popular opinion there may tie U.S. to those policies, complicating postauthoritarian transitions.
The effect of events in Afghanistan on public opinion in Central Asia is difficult to gauge. Yet this public opinion is already in general either exhausted by economic hardship or increasingly discontent with political repression. That very situation is what...
A good deal of attention has been devoted in recent days to the incident in the south Caspian on July 23, when Iranian military airplanes buzzed vessels that had been chartered by BP to begin exploring the Alov deposit, a...
Mavi akım projesinin tamamlanması konusundaki kuşıkular son dönemlerde daha da arttı. Bunun birinci nedeni, Türkiye'deki krizin sürmesi ve bizzat Mavi Akım anlaşımasına yönelik yolsuzluk soruşıturması....
It is projected that the Blue Stream pipeline will increase Turkey's dependence on Russian sources of natural gas from the current two-thirds level to about four-fifths. For this reason, the United States has reportedly raised hesitations to Ankara over the...
A sensational report has arrived that Moscow may be altering its policy on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) export pipeline, so as to permit Russian companies to participate in its construction and operation. Russia's foreign minister Ivan Ivanov is said to have...
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....
In one of the generally less remarked-upon recent political earthquakes, the reform-oriented government of Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine has lost a no-confidence vote in the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) but will stay on at the head of a caretaker...
Following meetings with Turkmenistan's President Saparmurad Niyazov in Ashgabat, Viktor Kaluzhnyi, President Vladimir Putin's special envoy on Caspian affairs, announced earlier this month that the five-way summit to define the Caspian Sea's legal status and the question of its division...
This article calls attention to overlooked aspects of the Central Asian energy balance, with special attention paid to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and the contrasts between them and the significance of those contrasts.
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...
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...
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...
In an official announcement, the government of Turkmenistan put its cards on the table concerning the diplomatic position that it plans to take on the demarcation of the Caspian Sea and the division of its resources at the summit meeting...
Armenia has suffered severe energy shortages since 1991 and has long been looking to Iran to relieve its energy needs. Last year the European Commission decided to back a project for construction of a pipeline from Iran into Armenia. Discussions...