Caspian region

The landlocked Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water on Earth. Surrounded by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, the Caspian Sea is home to myriad ecosystems. At the meeting point of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, the Caspian region includes steppe land in the north, cold, continental deserts and semi-deserts in the northeast and east, and warmer mountain and highland systems in the south and southwest. The coastal wetlands of the Caspian basin include many shallow, saline pools, which attract a variety of bird life and biodiversity over 400 species are unique to the Caspian. In addition, the sea s native sturgeon is famous the world around for the roe it produces sturgeon from the Caspian Sea accounts for approximately 90% of the world s caviar industry. 

In addition to the existing problems, several other issues could compound the Caspian region s environmental difficulties. Oil and gas production in the sea inevitably will result in the construction of pipelines and infrastructure to export these... 

Although environmental legislation has been passed in the four Soviet states, as in Iran, the application and enforcement of these new laws is often suspect. Poverty in the Caspian region means that corruption is rampant, and since oil and gas production are the driving forces behind the growth of the region s economies, the enforcement of... 

The Blue Stream sub-sea pipeline (BS) project was constructed to deliver gas from the Russian Black Sea region to Turkey without involving any transit country. Gas might be Russian, Turkmen or Kazakhstani. However, in contrast to Gazprom s expectation the delivery through the Blue Stream system has been delayed for a long time because of disputes with Turkey. To resolve this Blue Stream problem, the Russian presidential envoy to the Caspian Region, Mr. Viktor Kalyuzhnyi, offered to build a gas... 

In the foreseeable future a strong requirement for gas supply to Europe from new sources, including those of the Caspian region, is likely to occur. In Europe the Caspian gas will have to compete primarily with the established suppliers. At the same time the North Sea reserves will be on decline. The pipelines for supply of the Algerian gas through Morocco and Tunisia have limited capacity. LNG imports from the Middle East and Africa will reach their limits. And Russia will face significant difficulties in developing new reserves in Siberia and the Barents Sea [24,25],... 

In co-operation with Turkey and the Balkan states the South Caucasus region can secure the supply of deficient natural gas from the Caspian region to Europe on favourable terms and conditions. 

For the additional natural gas supply to Europe and Turkey from the Caspian region the following routes are considered ... 

For a comparative analysis see, Bulent Aras, Caspian Region and Middle East Security , Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol.13, No.l (2002), pp.86-109. 

Owing to the tremendous gas reserves of Russia and the Caspian region (37.8% of the stated world reserves) the Russian policy is to establish a Euro-Asian gas export organisation - similar to OPEC - to control the gas export of the individual Central Asian producers to the west - basically through the gas pipeline grid under Gazprom control. For this purpose Gazprom held very serious diplomatic and business talks with Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian countries in 2002. 

Victor Kaluzhni, President Putin s Representative to the Caspian Region has repeatedly made such an offer in his presentation on The Caspian Oil and Gas Show, June 4-5 2003... 

In historical perspective it could be noted that the rapid growth of the world industry in the 19th century drew increased attention to energy carriers in the Caspian region. In 1904 the famous Nobel brothers and their partners... 

At present Russia and Iran are the only suppliers of natural gas to the South-Eastern European region including Turkey and the South Caucasian countries. This one-sided dependency is a de-facto-monopoly situation that may be used to impose political pressure on the countries involved - as experienced by Ukraine and Georgia over the last ten years. In order to improve this situation, natural gas supply from the Caspian region to Europe should be secured by diversification of source, supplier and transit country. 

The construction of the oil pipeline Samsun-Ceyhan is underway that will enable oil transit in bypass of Turkish Straits. It is designed to construct 550 km of the oil pipeline going from Black Sea port Samsun to Kyrykkale City. This new pipeline is designed for the transit of 50-70 million tons of crude oil per year. As a result, additional amounts of oil will flow from the countries of the Black Sea and Caspian regions. It is anticipated that the first oil from Samsun will reach Ceyhan as early as 2008. 

Rubanov IV (1980) In Andrianov BV, Zorin LV, Nikolaeva RV (eds) Fluctuations of moisture supply in the Aral-Caspian region during the Holocene. Nauka, Moscow, pp 204-209 (in Russian)... 

Yanshin AL (1953) Geology of the Northern Caspian region. Materials on the geological setting of the USSR. Moscow, MOIP, new series, vol. 15(19) 370 p (in Russian)... 

Over the next 10-15 years, European gas supply availability will be adversely affected by a combination of three factors first, ongoing indigenous resource depletion second, political and geopolitical problems between Russia and CIS countries, within the Middle East/Caspian region and between these regions and EU countries and third, the globalizing market for ENG in the Atlantic and Pacific Basins. 

EU (2006b) mentions a scenario in which 10-15 percent of EU gas supplies would come from the Caspian region by 2025 suggesting 2-3 Nabucco-sized pipelines by that date. As illustrated by disruptions to the Iran-Turkey pipeline in 200 07 (mainly) due to Kurdish terrorists. 

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