Baku-ceyhan Pipeline Under Way

[Nakharar]

Maybe Armenians should count themselves lucky in not having natural resources. It's a double edged sword, one's blessings will be soon cancelled out. Countries with oil are usually toyed around. Though Azerbaijan is tad bit smarter or luckier in regard to the foreign oil companies. Their oil consortium SOCAR will get about 80 percent of the money, whereas the exception in other oil exporting countries is only 50 percent. If they don't diversify their economy and peg all their income and expectations on oil then they are in for a rough ride. They should take lessons from Saudi Arabia which squandered 400 billion (!) dollars in infrastructure and nothing in human capital. We'll all see the results in a few years. Though I don't think that Azerbaijan is in such a desperate situation (economically maybe) as those Arab countries who had nothing to begin with. I don't think they can be compared to the ignorant Arab herd. The level of people's education is comparatively higher and even though they can hardly be classified as democratic they have an active opposition which won't ignore discrepancies so easily.

[gamavor]

Geology, Oil and Gas Potential, Pipelines, and the Geopolitics of the

Caspian Sea Region

 

Ocean Development & International Law

35:19-40, 2004

 

BY PHILIP D. RABINOWITZ, MEHDI Z. YUSIFOV, JESSICA ARNOLDI, EYAL HAKIM

Department of Geology & Geophysics

Texas A & M University

College Station, Texas, USA

 

EXCERPT

 

Legal Issues in the Caspian Sea

 

The exporting of fossil fuels from the Caspian region will require the

development of pipelines that traverse political boundaries. There are

many scenarios for pipeline routes, as discussed above, each having

both political and economic problems. What is discussed below are the

current legal status of the Caspian Sea and the regional conflicts

that pose political risks that must be taken into consideration before

decisions are made. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, treaties

of 1921 and 1940 established an exclusive 10-mile fishing zone for the

Soviet Republics and Iran and referred to the Caspian Sea as the

Soviet-Iranian Sea. However, these treaties did not cover ownership of

seabed boundaries or which state had jurisdiction respecting oil and

gas exploration. In the post-Soviet era, conflicting approaches have

been proposed to dividing the offshore regions among the five

independent countries bordering the Caspian Sea. Some important

agreements have been reached, but there are still a number of

outstanding problems. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the

Sea (UNCLOS) provides that a state may claim a 12-nautical-mile (nm)

territorial sea and a 200 nm exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The

Caspian Sea is not wide enough to allow for the full extent of 200 nm

EEZs for states on opposing coasts. The threshold legal question is

how the Caspian Sea is to be classified. If the Caspian Sea is

classified as a sea, then UNCLOS is applicable; however, if it is

classified as a lake, then UNCLOS is not applicable and the Caspian

Sea is free of the international rules governing oceans (Oxman,1996;

Sciolino, 1998).

 

The initial Russian position, addressed to the UN General Assembly in

1994, was that international ocean law, particularly those pertaining

to territorial seas and EEZ, do not apply since the Caspian is a

landlocked body of water without natural links to the worlds' oceans

(Gouliev, 1997). Their position was that there are no grounds for

unilateral claims to areas of the Caspian and that the entire sea is a

joint venture area (a "condominium" approach). The implications are

that any activity with respect to utilizing the seabed by one country

encroaches upon the interests of all the other bordering countries. In

1996 Russia softened their position by suggesting the establishment of

a 45 nm EEZ for all littoral states with joint ownership beyond the 45

nm limit.

 

The Azerbaijan position differed considerably from that of the initial

Russian position. Azerbaijan claimed that the Caspian Sea falls within

the jurisdiction of the international Law of the Sea. Using this

approach, a median line is drawn using the shores with the coastal

states having full sovereignty in their respective sectors. In 1997,

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, as between themselves, agreed to an

approach based on the median line principle. Russia and Kazakhstan in

1998, and Russia and Azerbaijan in 2001 also agreed to this approach

to delineate their respective offshore areas. Thus, Russia,

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have agreed to divide the seafloor into

sectors or zones between corresponding neighboring and oppositely

located states.

 

Turkmenistan agrees to this approach in principle, but not in method,

claiming that application of a median line does not take into account

the peculiarities of the shore line, in particular, the potentially

oil rich Absheron Peninsula that is presently claimed by

Azerbaijan. Iran, however, still disagrees with any division of the

Caspian using median lines. Iran originally favored the "condominium"

approach but later considered dividing the Caspian into five equal

areas with each state having sovereignty over 20% of the seabed

resources and water. Utilizing median lines, Iran's sector of the

Caspian does not have the potential fossil fuel resources. Iran's

method of dividing the Caspian gives them not only a larger share of

the Caspian Sea than the median line approach but as well would place

potential oil-rich seafloor regions claimed by Azerbaijan in their

sector (Croissant, 1998; U.S. Energy Information Administration,

2001).

 

Because of the above disagreements, there are conflicts between

Azerbaijan and Iran. In 1999, Azerbaijan accused Iran of licensing

Royal Dutch Shell to do seismic exploration in an area the Azeri

government claimed was in their sector. In July 2001, the Iranian Oil

Ministry issued a warning to foreign energy firms not to work with the

other four Caspian states in the disputed areas of the Caspian

Sea. The day after the warning was issued, Iranian ships intercepted a

British Petroleum (BP) seismic exploration ship (the Geofizik-3) that

was undertaking exploration in the Araz-Alov-Sarq fields in the South

Caspian Basin. These fields, located ~90 miles southeast of Baku,

Azerbaijan, were licensed by the Azeri government to a BP consortium

and are in a region over which Iran claims sovereignty. This incident

was the first overt military act in the Caspian Sea since the breakup

of the Soviet Union (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2002).

 

According to Dr. Elmar Mamedyarov, Charge d'Affaires, Embassy of

Azerbaijan, the dispute between Iran and Azerbaijan regarding the

legal status of the Caspian is a "component of the tension that has

arisen in the area" (Calabrese, 2001). This tension includes the

Iranian support of Armenia in the conflict over Nagorno-Karakh, a

highly contentious region, and one that pits Armenia and Azerbaijan in

a state of "cold war."

 

The U.S. presence and influence in Azerbaijan has also fueled tension

in the region, especially since Iranian companies are excluded from

U.S. energy projects in the Caspian. Conflicts regarding seabed

sovereignty also exist between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Though as

noted earlier Turkmenistan has agreed in principle with Azerbaijan,

Russia, and Kazakhstan respecting use of a median line to divide up

the seabed, exactly where to draw this line has created a major

dispute with Azerbaijan. The Absheron Peninsula of Azerbaijan juts

into the Caspian Sea. Because of this coastline "anomaly," strict

application of a median line gives Azerbaijan more of the mid-Caspian

than Turkmenistan would agree to cede. Turkmenistan claims the border

should lie on a line drawn using the shores of the two states lying

opposite. This would give Turkmenistan a larger share of the

mid-Caspian, an area where there is significant oil potential (the

Serdar/Kyapaz oil fields). Though considerable rhetoric has arisen

between the two countries, hostilities have thus far been

nonexistent...

 

 

Copyright: Taylor & Francis Inc.

 

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg84446.html

 

 

 

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The only good of this piece of paper (I dare not to call it article, more less analysis) is that it touches upon some of the hot issues that I made a note about, some time ago. Nevertheless, the names of the authors speak for themselves. I never read anything more dilettantish on the subject, however I think the main purpose of the article is to throw dirt over Armenia.

Iran supporting Armenia??? How? With silence? How about the afghans and mudjahedins, fighting with Al-Qaida money against Armenians?

Politics aside, the fear of the Azeris for the lion chunk are very real. As I said the Caspian is a lake - legally and physically.