Métodos de evaluación

Arguably the most important implication of the BTC project was that it effectively constituted the first and most important operational feature of the U.S. East-West Energy Corridor, at the expense of long-standing geopolitical dominance of the Russian north-south export corridor. Essentially, the U.S. managed to use the pipeline to dilute Moscow’s control over the export space despite having favourable sovereign territorial advantage in terms of existing pipeline infrastructure. The sustained U.S. diplomatic initiatives by the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, that ensured the pipeline’s construction, shaped a convergence of state- driven (for the U.S. and its allies) geopolitical logic with oil industry transnational purpose. For those states bound together by BTC – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Turkey – the East-West Energy Corridor has strengthened their security ties to the West, which in turn has derived greater resource supply security from BTC and the corridor. However, conversely, the existence of the pipeline has also presented a potentially tempting and vulnerable target in any future interstate or insurgent conflict in the region.

The BTC scheme also accelerated the development of the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) (also known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) gas pipeline), which became operational in May 2006. Furthermore, the BTC also marked the southward shift of a major export route for Caspian hydrocarbons away from Russian-controlled routes and means, including the CPC. This had transit-revenue implications for Russia and a partial loss of geopolitical leverage that control over export pipelines confers. The operationalisation of the BTC proved that land- locked Caspian and perhaps Central Asian petroleum could be exported westwards along a

corridor that bypassed Russia for the first time.56 BTC also enabled an export route that avoided transiting Iran, which though a shorter terrestrial traverse and more economically logical for IOCs, was denied due to sanctions imposed by the U.S. intended to isolate Iran geopolitically and economically.

Overall, the export volume capacity of the BTC has greatly raised the petroleum geopolitical profile of the Caspian region within the Strategic Energy Ellipse, which has long been dominated by the Persian Gulf’s high-volume producing states. Notwithstanding previously exaggerated proven and probable reserves (particularly for oil), the BTC has given IOCs and NOCs engaged in upstream projects in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan another high-capacity option and means of monetizing their reserves. This potential has energised Kazakhstan’s plans to develop a means of conveying its projected increased crude export volumes from its Kashagan field to Baku, from where BTC can convey it to world markets. This has the effect of boosting Baku’s status as a petroleum gateway, and increasing the chances of Turkmenistan choosing to eventually export some of its gas westwards across the Caspian to complement increased Kazakh crude exports during the next decade.

Kazakhstan has also proposed that it would consider building a trans-Caspian oil pipeline from its port at Aktau to Baku. However, due to alleged ‘environmental’ opposition to a Caspian offshore pipeline by both Russia and Iran, and also due to potential complications arising from long-standing Caspian Sea territorial demarcation disputes, the oil pipeline is doubtful. Thus as an alternative, Kazakhstan has announced a new project named Kazakh- Caspian Transportation System (KCTS), which was originally scheduled to come into operation in 2010. This scheme, comprises a pipeline from Iskene to the Caspian port of Kuryk, loading/discharge port terminals in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and finally the acquisition of specialized low-draft, ice-classed tankers (the Caspian Sea is particularly shallow in its northern reaches and is ice-covered in winter).57

KCTS is currently stalled in the design and facilitation stage given that it is principally intended for the export of crude from Kashagan, which is not yet in production after repeated delays. Current estimates suggest that it is not likely to begin initial, low-volume production until late 2013 or early 2014, and phase-2 production is not expected until 2018 or 2019.58 KCTS would have the effect of drawing Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan geopolitically closer together across the Caspian as petroleum exporting partners; however, these ties could complicate Almaty’s petro-logistic relationship with Moscow if increasing amounts of crude

were exported south rather than via Russian pipelines. China will also be monitoring Kazakhstan’s relations with both Russia and the West in this regard as it seeks to ensure sufficient crude supplies to its pipelines heading eastwards from the Caspian, which is the subject of the next section.

Fig 5.5 Kazakhstan Caspian Transportation System (KCTS)

5.4

China

5.4.1 Historical and Contemporary Geopolitical Status in the Region

Three inter-linked reasons explain China’s engagement in the substantial and expanding project to acquire and convey oil and gas from the Caspian and Central Asian space to China’s western border. Firstly (and most obviously), China is geographically contiguous with the Asian heartland; it is a major Asian continental power, which has a geopolitical and trading inclination towards its western neighbours, including Kazakhstan.59 Secondly, China’s advancing economic growth requires increasing supplies of energy (for power generation and transportation), and it naturally sees the significant reserves in the Caspian and Central Asian states as a vital and accessible source, particularly given that the necessary pipelines can be built directly to its western borders. Thirdly, the region is seen as the most strategically-important means by which China can diversify its sources of petroleum. Specifically, Beijing is keen to reduce the country’s reliance on VLCC-shipped supplies from the Persian Gulf, which is currently China’s largest source of oil. From a wider strategic perspective, it is very clear to the Chinese government that the latter source is located within a region that is geopolitically and militarily dominated by the United States, as are the Indian Ocean sea lines of communication that lead from it to the Malacca Straits (see chapter 6).60

Whilst China was not an actor of significance during the original Great Game of the 19th century, it is most certainly a pivotal player in the new 21st century version as examined in the framework chapter of this thesis. Indeed, China was central to the formation of the “Shanghai Five” in 1996; a consortium of five regional Asian states comprising China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, which was formed to cooperatively address issues of regional extremism and separatism. This cooperative was later upgraded in 2001 into a fully-fledged regional body - the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which also included Uzbekistan.61 The SCO remains primarily a security organisation tackling terrorism and insurgency in Central Asia, with China’s main concern being the suppression and control of the Uighur separatists that are waging an insurgency campaign in an attempt to establish an independent Muslim state (‘East Turkestan’) in what is now the Xingjian autonomous region.

The Chinese government has long strived to eliminate the possibility of neighbouring Muslim countries being used as a safe haven for the separatists. Crucially for the Chinese, Xingjian also forms China’s border with Kazakhstan, and it is across this margin that oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian and Central Asia traverse. Furthermore, as a key member of the

SCO, China can also use it as a means of exerting and focusing its geopolitical influence towards Central Asia and the Caspian for the specific aim of limiting Russia’s ability to dominate the means of conveyance of petroleum in the region; a position Russia cemented during the Soviet era.62 The SCO also nominally functions as a counter-weight alliance to the sizable U.S. military presence in Central Asia, which was deployed in the wake of September 11 and the subsequent campaign to destroy Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Against this background, the SCO, in addition to its regional security remit, has also evolved into an important forum for Asian diplomatic exchange, enabling member states to use it as a forum for promoting vital trade to complement political exchange and cooperation.63 In this way, China has long used the SCO to help foster dialogue and deals for the advancement of its energy security; specifically the acquisition of sources of oil and gas, particularly from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For China, in addition to its bilateral diplomatic ties, the SCO has emerged as a useful means through which to exert geopolitical influence: developing trading ties with the aforementioned energy-rich states; trading diplomatic engagement with Russia; and, ensuring its central position as part of a bloc that helps maintain the cooperative security needed to protect the long, vulnerable oil and gas pipelines linking Caspian and Central Asian oil and gas fields with China’s border with Kazakhstan.

Conveyance routing/geopolitical objectives

China’s geopolitical strategy, as it pertains to accessing oil and gas in the Caspian and Central Asian region, is built upon two main pillars:

1. gaining access to exploration & production schemes and equity oil and gas reserves at source (see chapter three);

2. and secondly, by forging deals to partner in the building of pipelines from fields in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to China’s western pipeline grid in Xingjian, which in turn links up with provincial lines to its industrial and urban heartlands elsewhere in the country.

In focusing on the second of the two pillars – conveyance – China has concentrated initially and most ardently on its dealings with Kazakhstan, because this is where China’s current equity oil is located, and because of the potential to access substantial future petroleum supplies from other fields in the country (such as the giant Kashagan oil and condensate field in the Caspian). Furthermore, notwithstanding the harsh environmental conditions that present considerable technical and operational challenges for oil pipeline routing and construction, the

optimum pipeline route connecting the Caspian fields with Xingjian, and thereafter to Karamay and Urumqi (the site of China’s most important oil production and refining complex), is across the Kazakh Steppe.64 At this juncture, the two most vital pipelines that constitute the strategic backbone of China National Petroleum Corporation’s (CNPC) conveyance operations from Caspian and western central Asian space are the Kazakhstan- China Pipeline (oil) and the recently completed Central Asia-China gas pipeline.