The influence of the Caspian Region on Central Asia
By Claude Salhani
Senior editor of the English service of Trend
Agency
Having heard the importance that commerce and trade plays in
this region - this region being from the Caspian to the Levant --
some years ago an American magazine sent a team of reporters and
photographers to do a major story on commerce and trade in the
region.
On their first day on the streets of the bustling capital city, as
the reporters made their way through the crowded bazaar, one of
them saw a small boy, about six or seven years old, selling packets
of chewing gum. The American reporter asked the young boy if he
knew how much was one plus one.
Without any hesitation the young lad fired back: "Are you buying or selling?"
The answer may have surprised the American reporter but it was a natural answer for the people of the region who for centuries have handed businesses down from father to son, and who for centuries have turned to commerce and trade which flourished given the strategic location in which they often found themselves, along this important communication corridor on the busy commercial route that became known as the Silk Road.
The Silk Road is as busy today as it was in the days of Marco Polo, when the Italian explorer made his way from Europe to the Far East, and back, carrying spices back to Europe, passing inevitably through the Caspian region and Central Asia.
In fact the Caspian region today plays a far more prominent role
linking Europe to Central Asia and beyond. This is true not only
from an energy perspective but the Caspian region is also playing
an increasingly important role politically, socially, as well as
economically.
Only perhaps, given the changes, it should not be called the Silk
Road any longer, but rather it should be re-baptized the "Silk
Pipeline."
Because if by some miracle Marco Polo was somehow able to return
and revisit the region today he would be amazed at the thousands of
miles of pipelines that traverse the region, a phenomenon that of
course did not exist in the days of the great explorer.
Indeed, the pipelines are in a manner of speaking the modern camel
caravans, bringing essentials for a more comfortable life from the
"Orient" - read here, Central Asia - to Europe.
Central Asia is today an important zone that is located between
Europe and China and through which transits many of the goods
destined for the European markets, as it was back in the days of
the Silk Road. Only with the difference that that single dirt lane,
probably nothing more than a dirt trail upon which the camel trains
traveled, has today expanded into The Asian Highway Network (or the
Great Asian Highway) a 141,000km network of roads running across 32
countries. It is being built with the intention of improving
transport facilities throughout these nations and providing road
links to Europe.
The Asian Highway Network is a part of the Asian Land Transport
Infrastructure Development (ALTID) project being supported by
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the
Pacific (ESCAP).
Add to that airline corridors connecting all major cities in the
region and of course the Internet that has further brought the
region closer together and closer to Europe on one side and the Far
East and the United States on the other.
Central Asia today is gaining prominence, not only from a
geographic perspective, because of its strategic location at a
major crossroads where not only commerce meets, but where politics
converge, crisscross and overlap.
Where else in the world would you get such political undertones and zones of influence and interests as diverse as Russian, American and Iranian? Not to forget the Europeans, the Turks and all other individual states, all vying for the greatest positions in terms of influences in business and economy and political importance.
Central Asia is a region surrounded by major players in
geopolitics; just look at the map-Russia, China, India, Pakistan
-four nuclear powers right there, and Iran hoping to join that club
at some point in the near future. At some point the national
interest of these countries is bound to clash over something or
other. The region is not without its share of inter-regional
disputes, such as which country owns what part of the Caspian Sea
or yet existing territorial disputes that hopefully can be solved
without further violence.
Last month we came very close to returning to the worst days the
Cold War over the Ukraine and Crimea. And while we are still
nowhere near a resolution in this issue, we have at least turned
the corner and avoided a disaster. But there is still a long way to
go.
The Caspian region is not only an oil and gas producer, but it
is also a region through which oil and gas transits, coming from
Central Asia and heading for Western Europe.
This is an important point as Russia does not permit energy to
transit through its territory, so countries that produce
hydrocarbon materials are more interested in having their goods
transit through the Caspian countries.
Then there is the dark side of business, a scourge that alas has plagued every generation since the beginning of time. I am referring of course to narco-trafficking and the trafficking of human beings, a problem that needs to be given greater attention by the security services of the countries concerned.
These two issues, much like terrorism, require close cooperation by governments concerned, just as they cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
The region has become an area in which all the world is
interested and looking at today.
Then in addition to oil and natural gas, some countries, such as
Kazakhstan, have uranium and other riches found both onshore and
offshore.
Additionally, Central Asia will also play a greater role in regional security as the United States completes its military withdrawal from Afghanistan. How that will change the balance of power in the region remains to be seen.
And what of China, the new kid on the bloc who is rapidly becoming the main consumer of energy in the world, surpassing the United States and Western Europe?
China's economy is growing at an amazing rate. And a growing economy means an expanding thirst for energy, especially oil and gas.
Amidst all these tumultuous changes, when we look at the region
and how it is developing, the setting of pipelines through some
countries that are not without problems or risk, there is no
denying that Azerbaijan, due to its geographic location, political
stability and modernization remains one of the safest investment in
the Caspian, Caucasus and Central Asian region.
As one Azerbaijani friend put it, "We are the corridor between
Europe and the Far East and Central Asia. This is why everyone is
interested in us."
And in that corridor you will find some of the business marvels of this new era of commerce and trade, among them the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline 1,700 kilometers, including about 450 kilometer section running via Azerbaijan, the 250 kilometer section via Georgia and 1,075 kilometer via Turkey.
The length of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (South Caucasus gas
pipeline) is over 700 km.
The gas produced from the Shah Deniz field in the Azerbaijani
sector of the Caspian Sea is transported via the pipeline. The gas
is supplied to Georgia and Turkey. Azerbaijan also is a buyer of
gas.
Last December, a final investment decision was made on the second phase of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz offshore gas and condensate field's development.
Gas from the field will first go to the European market. The gas to be produced within the second phase of the field's development will be exported to Turkey (six billion cubic meters per year) and to the European markets (10 billion cubic meters per year) by means of expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and construction of the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
Shah Deniz reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters
of gas.
The silk road now carries not only oil and gas pipelines but people
like Marco Polo, who if he was to travel in the region today, there
are good chances that he would be doing so by rail rather than by
camel train and more specifically he would be taking the
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway that connects Azerbaijan, Georgia, and
Turkey.