In shaping and categorising his post-cold War ‘universalistic/geographical’ and ‘reality- based’ geopolitical theory, Saul Cohen suggests that geopolitical structures comprise geopolitical patterns and features. Patterns refer to the literal physical form, scale and ‘physical/human geographical characteristics of geopolitical units, and the networks that tie them together’.44 The features are the ‘political-geographical nodes, areas, and boundaries that contribute to the [geopolitical] unit’s uniqueness and influences its cohesiveness…and effectiveness.’45 To this I would add they contribute also to its influence upon other features and the nature of interactions between them. In analysing the petroleum industry and the systemic trading of oil and gas as both reactionary phenomena and also as determinants of contemporary geopolitics, the following features as advanced by Cohen - Compression Zones
and Shatterbelts; Flashpoints and Chokepoints; Gateways; Effective National Territory (ENT) & Effective Regional Territory (ERT)46 – stand out as useful components of his geopolitical theorising that can be usefully applied to this analytical framework.
Compression Zones and Shatterbelts
Compression Zones, which are smaller in geographical expanse than shatterbelts (see later section), are politically and/or ethnically-nationally fragmented areas located within or between geopolitical regions. Typically, such zones have been (or are in the process of being) violently destabilised by civil war and/or the intervention of neighbouring countries that are not great powers. Such intervention may not necessarily be aggressive, but rather the deployment of peacekeeping forces.47
Cohen argues that compression zones can emerge, intensify, wane and disappear altogether depending the change in behaviour of the adjacent (and intervening) states or due to the socio- political ontology inside the zone itself.48 Though he imaginatively likens the flux of compression zones from periods of structural instability to stability of the movement and isostacy of the earth’s tectonic geology, he does not really expand on exactly what forces create such changes. Specifically, he does not discuss whether internal phenomena, such as a nationally-driven civil conflict, are more influential as causal variables or whether it is the behaviour of external actors that contributes more to these changes. I would argue that it is the latter that has greater impact in fuelling instability within a compression zone, though these external influences tend to be existential and latent and thus not always immediately discernable.
This last point is important because compression zones that lie within oil and gas producing regions, or amidst or adjacent to areas through which petroleum must be transported, may lie dormant for many years or even decades. They may, thus, be deemed to be ‘safe’ or of acceptable risk for oil production and transportation operations. In other words, the geopolitical and security-risk level is acceptable to allow exploration, production and transportation operations to proceed. However, a seemingly stable compression zone can sometimes ignite into instability in the event of an internal political change or the inimical interference of a neighbouring state with little or no warning. This can seriously compromise any oil and gas operations extant within or adjacent to it; such as occurred in Chechnya during the First Chechen War of 1994-96.49
From a geopolitical perspective, the phenomena that contribute to form and characterise the status of a compression zone can include: the ethnic or national composition and balance of the population within it; the states that are adjacent to it and their relative power and influence; the presence of strategically important mineral resources within the zone; the topographical and physical (including land corridors and coastal access) utility of the zone for the transmission of resources; and, the levels of transportation infrastructure that can be utilised (or miss-used) by internal conflictual groups and neighbouring forces for the purposes of waging armed conflict.
Examples of current and possible future compression zones that have significance for the petroleum industry in the Eurasian and Indo-Pacific realms are: Armenia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Egypt, Georgia (Abkhazia & South Ossetia), the Horn of Africa, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. Some zones, such as those in the Caucasus, impact more upon conveyance projects, whilst others, for example those in Iraq and Yemen, have a greater effect on upstream operations as well as conveyance. Cohen and others have raised the issue of compression zones; however, the phenomenon has not been thoroughly analysed as a distinct concept in relation to the wider geopolitical, strategic, conflictual and political risk concerns explicit to the petroleum industry. This is one of the component tasks in this project, specifically within the formulation of the theoretical framework and also amidst elements of the case studies.
As examined in detail in chapter four, Iraq’s importance to the global supply of crude oil will increase as its production expands between 2010 and 2016. The government’s overly optimistic projections of increased daily production capacity of 12 million barrels per day are unrealistic in the extreme. Nevertheless, an increase to 4-6 million barrels per day is feasible and even this level will elevate the country’s strategic importance to the global market commensurately. That said, Iraq remains a compression zone, and there are few signs that the country’s internal security situation will improve measurably and stabilise at greatly improved levels for some time to come. Moreover, the country also lies within the world’s most enduring shatterbelt – the ‘Strategic Energy Ellipse’ (which is examined in a subsequent section), which merely serves to complicate prospects for lasting socio-political stability and security within the country.
Essentially, this means that IOCs and NOCs engaged in large-scale projects to boost production in the southern ‘super fields’ – Rumaila, West Qurna 1 and 2, Majnoon, Zubair
and Halfaya – and the Kirkuk fields will have to accept the political and security risks associated with operating in a ‘petroleum compression zone’ or delay operations until the security and political situation improves and stabilises. Based on the situation in early 2011, it appears that projects are proceeding despite the uncertainties. This, of course, is unsurprising; oil and gas operations have been ongoing in compression zones for decades and risk management is an integral part of this reality, particularly given the increasing challenges faced by IOCs and NOCs in gaining access to produce oil and gas.
In chapter five, the U.S. drive to establish the ‘East-West Energy Corridor’ – a conduit linking the main oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan with a pipeline across Turkey to a terminal on its Mediterranean coast – will be examined as an integral part of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline case study. The BTC line is routed through a sizable and vital part of the ‘East-West Energy Corridor’ (the southern Caucasus (specifically Georgia)), which remains a compression zone due to the ongoing tensions between Georgia and Russia over the status of the two break-away republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Tensions over the republics led to a brief but violent war in August 2008 in which Russian forces defeated the Georgian army. Though the BTC was not directly threatened or attacked, tensions remain over the disputed territories that are recognised only by Russia and a hand- full of other states, and the potential for future clashes that might threaten the East-West Energy Corridor more widely (and possibly the BTC directly) certainly exists. It is worth noting, for example, that some sections of the BTC are also located just a few miles from parts of the tense Nagorno-Karabakh contact-line. Despite long-standing international mediation and monitoring, occasional exchanges of fire between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces occur across the line, which is also heavily mined.
Shatterbelts, which have also been referred to in the literature as ‘Crush Zones’ or ‘Shatter Zones’, have been of central interest to geographers and geopolitical thinkers for a long time. At the turn of the 21st century, Mahan, referred to the geopolitical brittleness and inherent instability of the area (or zone) between the 30th and 40th parallels in Central Asia – the region caught between the competing influences of Britain and Russia during the ‘Great Game’. In 1915, James Fairgrieve referred to the vast swathe of territory that lay in a northwest-to- southeast arc between the maritime powers and the Eurasian heartland, which incorporated the Balkans, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Siam (Thailand) and Korea as a ‘crush zone’.50 Later,
in World War II, Hartshorne spoke of the ‘shatter zone’ in a north-south axis in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Adriatic that was contested over by Nazi Germany, the Allies and the USSR.51 Shatterbelts were a central feature of Cold War geopolitics, wherein the superpowers vied for influence and dominance over three shatterbelts: the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; sub-Saharan Africa; and, Southeast Asia.
Given the examples established above, the logic of the various definitions of a shatterbelt is easy to grasp. For Cohen it is: ‘a large, strategically located region that is occupied by a number of conflicting states and is caught between the conflicting interests of adjoining Great Powers’.52 Philip L. Kelly describes a shatterbelt as ‘a geographic region over which major powers engage in competition because they have strong perceived national interests…Therefore, the potential for major conflict escalation is present’.53
These descriptions reveal the spatial dimension of a given geopolitically brittle area or region (which may encompass sea areas as well as terrestrial ones) that is located in a strategically critical part of the world, and demonstrates the greater likelihood of it becoming the site of major conflict given the interference of major powers. It is worth noting that this interference might not initially take the form of a direct air attack, naval deployment or a land invasion. Indeed, the intervening, competing great powers may not necessarily be geographically neighbouring or even proximate to the shatterbelt in question. Early intervention may be latent and take the form of materially or financially supporting proxy protagonists and opponents within the region. Support in the early stages of tension may be confined to political succour for an ideologically like-minded state or sub-group.
A shatterbelt is thus, a classic illustration of geopolitics and geo-strategic posture that is produced from the causal interrelationship between geographical realities such as its sensitive location on the map, strategically favourable access and the presence of vital mineral resources such as oil and gas, the location and size of opposing nations, and the application of external sources of power and coercion. An important feature of shatterbelts, in keeping with the geographical and spatial dimension of the manifestations of rivalry, tension and the outbreak of open armed conflict, is how conflict can spread and diffuse across borders – a form of conflict osmosis. This facet of shatterbelts is examined by Kirby and Ward who posit that where there are regional groupings of states that have common borders and are prone to conflict with one another, tensions can be transmitted to neighbouring states within the shatterbelt.54 Similarly, Most and Starr also concluded that an extant conflict or major war in
one state increases the chances of conflict in its neighbour.55 Today, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both important countries for the production, transport and potential future transport of oil and gas in Asia, are impacting on the national security of other petroleum-rich or vital gateway states such as neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.
The above clearly explores the existence and causal logic of shatterbelts during the era in which the term was coined – the Cold War. Indeed, given the strength of the ideological cleavage between the superpowers and their immense capacity for power projection it is no surprise that shatterbelts arose; even in areas in the strategic margins where their continental and maritime spheres of influence collided but which often contained no vital resources as such. However, does this phenomenon exist in the contemporary geopolitical and geostrategic environment where there is only one remaining superpower and several major powers of varying and changing capabilities? The void left by the monolithic ideological divide as the impetus for great power intervention has been filled by the presence of strategically vital resources in certain parts of the world. This is where the combination of strategic location and large natural resource bases within the separate ERTs - the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin/Trans-Caucasus regions - give rise to today’s most prominent and important shatterbelt. Indeed, some commentators have even fused these shatterbelts into one; a region that Kemp and Harkavy have referred to as the ‘Strategic Energy Ellipse’ (SEE).56
Strategic Energy Ellipse
The SEE extends along a north-south ellipsoid axis from the Russian oil and gas fields at the northern margin of the Caspian Basin to southern extent of the Arabian Peninsula. Along its broadest west-east axis, the SEE extends approximately from the nexus of the Iraqi-Syrian- Turkish borders in the west, eastwards to the conjuncture of the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan- Turkmenistan borders. I have slightly expanded the SEE set out by Kemp and Harkavy to also include some vital petroleum conduit states. Thus from a sovereign territory perspective, the SEE includes: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia (Caucasus & Caspian region), Saudi Arabia, Syria Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Though clearly not all of the territory of all these states is located inside the SEE, the petroleum-bearing areas within it contain over 70% of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves. 57
Fig. 2.3 Strategic Energy Ellipse-Shatterbelt
War:
Severe crisis: Crisis:
When considering major sources of petroleum and those countries that are currently strategically vital as conveyance corridors, parts or all of the following states are germane: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the UAE and Uzbekistan. Important future pipeline conveyance corridors could include Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Viewed as a shatterbelt, the SEE comprises numerous countries that are either involved in active wars and conflicts or suffer from histories of existential, latent conflict and insecurity. The issue of conflict will also be examined in later sub-section that addresses conflict and petroleum specifically. According to the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research's Conflict Barometer 2010, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan are in a de facto state of ‘war’, whilst the following states are in a state of ‘severe crisis’ with regards to high-intensity violent conflict: Russia (insurgency and terrorism in southern Caucasus region – Dageshtan & Ingushetia), Saudi Arabia (terrorism and conflict near the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border region), Turkey (terrorist threats from Kurdish separatists) and Yemen (terrorism, insurgency with Houthis rebels, and friction with secessionist south). Bahrain and Iran are in a state of ‘crisis’.58 [The definitions for the conflict types are given in the end notes.]
Viewed through a more generic political risk lens, countries within the SEE also score highly in terms of extant and potential risk for war and civil war, riot and civil commotion, terrorism and political interference. According to AON’s 2011 Political Risk Map, countries that are deemed ‘very high risk’ include: Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Armenia and Pakistan are categorised as ‘high risk’, whilst Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are regarded as ‘medium-high’ risk states.59
The complexities and dangers inherent in the SEE shatterbelt encompass and impact variously upon facets within numerous case studies and countries examined in the reserves, exploration and production and conveyance chapters in this project. These include: exploration and production projects in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar; pipelines in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan; and maritime conveyance challenges in the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and Bab al Mandeb. There are extant tensions between the following states: Iran and Iraq; Saudi Arabia and Yemen; Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan; Russia and Georgia; Turkey and Iraq; and between Iran and several of the countries within the Gulf Cooperation Council. There is existential friction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iran and Yemen, and notable terrorist threats in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Furthermore, the SEE has long been the setting for potential great power rivalry and competing interests variously between the United States, Russia and China, which are driven by, and impact directly upon, the petroleum resources and industry in states in the Caspian, the Caucasus and the Persian Gulf.
Flashpoints and Chokepoints
Related to the concept of chokepoints within geopolitics literature, a flashpoint refers to a single state, land area, or sea area that is itself disputed in terms of its sovereignty, or is the site of an existential ethno-politico, political, religious, strategic, resource or national dispute to the extent that it could provoke violent conflict; one that could also impact on the security of surrounding spaces. They are distinct from shatterbelts due to their much smaller geographical scale and because their transition to instability, conflict or violence does not necessarily obviate great power intervention or result from it. Nevertheless, the consequences of tensions and violence ignited within in a given flashpoint can indeed radiate outwards and induce geopolitical problems in other areas. Ewan Anderson, who has focused specifically on the concept of flashpoints in his work, suggests that they tend to be small geographical spaces
that constitute ‘the epicentres of geopolitical upheaval with consequences that can extend far beyond their point of origin’.60
In the context of this project, of the 123 global flashpoints61 identified by Anderson, 32 can be identified as located in oil and gas producing areas and countries, or are located near to, astride or at the junctures of primary pipeline routings or SPSs in the Asian and Indo-Pacific realms; examples of these include: the Caspian Sea; the East China Sea (Chinese and Japanese EEZ demarcation) (see earlier section concerning boundaries); Lomonsov Ridge sovereignty (Arctic Ocean); Nagorno-Karabakh; Paracel Islands, the Shatt al Arab waterway; the Timor Sea, and the Tunb Islands and Abu Musa Island. High profile potential examples include the Spratly Islands, the Straits of Hormuz, Bab al Mandeb, the Suez Canal and the Malacca Straits. Thus, in this way, some flashpoints are also sometimes synonymous with chokepoints.
Some flashpoints have triggered open conflict such as the dispute over the Shatt al Arab Waterway, which was arguably a pretext for Iraq’s attack on Iran in September 1980. However, others such as the Tunb and Abu Musa Islands dispute between the UAE and Iran, and the Spratly Islands dispute are persistent concerns but are more latent in nature.
Spratly Islands Dispute
The Spratly Islands are a collection of over 750 islands, islets, cays and reefs located in the South China Sea between Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.