< http://www.ca-c.org/journal/eng04-2001/02.rasprimen.shtml > THE MYTHOLOGY OF MUNIFICENT CASPIAN BONANZA AND ITS CONCOMITANT PIPELINE GEOPOLITICS Alec RASIZADE Alec Rasizade, Senior associate, Historical Research Center in Washington (U.S.A.) When I first ventured into the Caspian petroleum economics and geopolitics in the early 1990s, there was a great deal of ground to speculate on the future developments. Of late, the Caspian scholarship is getting increasingly difficult and unrewarding because what needs to be said has been over and again repeated in various international workshops and conferences, academic and industry journals, mass media and intelligence reports. Yet, at the expense of being repetitive at times and in the light of recent developments, there is still some room to articulate the issues that are likely to determine the future geopolitical landscape of the region and have a direct bearing on major powers' strategic interests. The Foggy Bottom's Old Caspian Tale and the Bush Administration's New Approach Among the major issues where the new U.S. administration has to cope with the Clinton legacy, are the Caspian area energy policy and the concomitant pipeline projects. The State Department has invested heavily in a grandiose strategy that has been to press the Caspian countries and international consortia operating in the region to export their oil and gas westward through pipelines that would terminate in Turkey. These costly projects, the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, never made obvious economic sense. The Department of State, nonetheless, has been a staunch advocate of both projects and pressed the leaders of Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to sign a package of legal framework agreements in Istanbul in 1999 under American auspices. The plan's strategic objective was twofold: to reduce Russia's political influence in the Caucasus by pushing it out of the Caspian Sea, and further isolate Iran in the region. However, instead of the politically bloated appraisal of 200 billion barrels in ostensible Caspian oil reserves (compared with Saudi Arabia 's 250 billion) valued at 4 trillion dollars, exuberantly cultivated for years by the State Department to allure American investors into the region and justify its own strategy there, we are talking today about 15 billion to 30 billion barrels of proven reserves, most of which are confirmed under the Kazakhstan section of the sea. Part of the problem is that what the U.S. government says tends to be taken much more seriously outside the United States than within. Oil industry analysts reacted with......
