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Jumpin' Jack Verdi, it's a gas, gas, gas
By Pepe Escobar
What is never spelled out is why. Enter the Black Sea, that crucial
geo-strategic stage where Europe meets the Middle East, the Caucasus, and
Central Asia. Enter, thus, Bulgaria, home to a new Pentagon air base in Bezmer,
one of six new strategic bases being built outside the US and as potentially
important to Washington's future games as the stalwart air bases in Incirlik,
Turkey, and Aviano, Italy have been in the past. (Aviano was the key US/NATO
base for the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and the 78-day bombing
campaign against Serbia in 1999.)
With the Pentagon's bases already creeping within a stone's throw of Southwest
and Central Asia, it doesn't take a genius to imagine the role Bezmer might
play in any future attack on Iran
(something the Russian defense establishment has already taken careful note
of). With both Romania and Bulgaria now part of NATO, Article 5 of the
alliance's charter now applies. NATO can take action "in the event of crises
which jeopardize Euro-Atlantic stability and could affect the security of
Alliance members."
In this way, Pipelineistan meets the American Empire of Bases.
Young Turks and wily Russians
Why is everyone so damn hooked on Central Asian oil and gas? Elshad Nasirov,
deputy chairman of the state-owned Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR, sums the
addiction up succinctly enough: "This is the place where there is oil and gas
in abundance. It is not Arab, not Persian, not Russian, and not OPEC."
It's the Caspian and, unfortunately for Europe, the region could, in energy
terms, turn out to be not the caviar for which it's renowned but so many rotten
fish eggs. No one knows, after all, whether the EU will ever be able to buy
Iranian gas via Nabucco. No one knows whether the Central Asian "stans" have
enough gas to supply Russia, China, and Turkey, not to mention India and
Pakistan. No one knows whether any of their leaders will have the nerve to
renege on their deals with Gazprom.
Ever since a 2008 British study determined that Turkmenistan may have natural
gas reserves second only to Russia, the European Commission has been on a
no-holds-barred tear to lure that country into delivering some of its future
gas directly to Europe - and not through the Russian pipeline system either.
Turkmenistan's inscrutable leader, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly
Berdymukhammedov, just has to say the word, but despite the claims of EU
officials that he has agreed to send some gas Europe-wards, he's never offered
a public word of confirmation.
No wonder: with Nabucco unbuilt and a pipeline from his country to China still
under construction, Turkmenistan can play Pipelineistan games only with Russia
and Iran. In fact, Russia essentially controls the flow of Turkmen gas for the
next 15 years.
Should Gurbanguly someday say the magic word - and assuming the Russians don't
throw a monkey wrench into the works - he can marry Turkey, as the key transit
country, with the EU and let them all sing Verdi till the sheep come home. In
the meantime, angst is the name of the game in Europe (and so in Washington).
A declassified dossier from the FSB, the Russian heir to the KGB, is adamant:
considering Nabucco's shortcomings, "Russia will remain the primary supplier of
energy to Europe for the foreseeable future." Call it a matter of having your
gas and processing it, too. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been making the
point for years. If Europe tries to snub it, Russia will simply build its own
liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, to facilitate storage and transport, and
sell its LNG all over the world.
Anyway, it's worth paying attention to what the St Petersburg State Mining
Institute (where Putin earned his doctorate) has to say. According to the
institute, Russia has only 20 years' worth of its own natural gas reserves
left. Since Russia plans to sell up to 40% of its gas abroad, "Russian" gas may
in the future actually mean Central Asian gas. All the more reason for the
Russians to make sure that those massive Turkmen and other reserves flow north,
not west.
Whatever Washington thinks, the Europeans know that energy independence from
Russia is, in reality, inconceivable. Bottom line when it comes to natural gas:
Europe needs everything - Nord Stream, South Stream, and Nabucco. The bulk of
the natural gas in this Pipelineistan maze may well turn out to be Central
Asian anyway and a substantial part could be Iranian, if the Obama
administration ever normalizes relations with Iran.
That, then, is the current state of play in the European wing of Pipelineistan.
Russia seems to have virtually guaranteed its status as the top gas supplier to
Europe for the foreseeable future. But that brings us to Turkey, a key regional
power for both the US and the EU. As President Obama has recognized, Turkey is
both a real and a metaphorical bridge between the Christian and Muslim worlds.
It is also an ideal transit country for carrying non-Russian gas to Europe and
is now playing its own suitably complex Pipelineistan game.
Chances are that, like Ukhta in far off Siberia, you've never heard of
Yumurtalik either. It's a fishing port squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea
and the Taurus mountains, very close to Ceyhan, the Turkish terminal for two
key nodes of Pipelineistan: the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline from Iraq and the
monster BTC pipeline. Turkey wants to turn Yumurtalik-Ceyhan into nothing less
than the Rotterdam of the Mediterranean.
Even as it dreams of future EU membership, however, Turkey worries about
antagonizing Moscow. And yet, being aboard the Nabucco Express and already
fully committed to the functioning BTC pipeline puts the country on a potential
collision course with Russia, its largest trading partner. Of course, this does
not displease Washington.
On the other hand, the Turkish leadership draws ever closer to Iran, which
provides 38% of Turkey's oil and 25% of its natural gas. Ankara and Tehran also
have geopolitical affinities (especially in fighting Kurdish separatism).
Together, they offer the best alternative to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia)
in terms of supplying Europe with Iranian natural gas. All this, of course,
drives Washington nuts.
Needless to say, the Nabucco consortium itself would kill to have Iran as a gas
supplier for the pipeline. They are also familiar with realpolitik: this could
happen only with a Washington-blessed solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier.
Iran, for its part, knows well how to seduce Europe. Mohammad-Reza Nematzadeh,
managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has insisted Iran
is Europe's "sole option" for the success of Nabucco.
Is Russia just watching all this gas go by? Of course not. In October 2007,
Putin signed a key agreement with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad: If Iran
cannot sell its gas to Nabucco - a likelihood given the turbulence of American
domestic politics and its foreign policy - Russia will buy it. Translation:
Iranian gas could end up, like Central Asian gas, heading for Europe as more
"Russian" gas. With its European and Iranian policies at cross-purposes,
Washington will not be amused.
When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rethink
Nabucco" if the tricky negotiations for Turkey to enter the EU drag on forever,
EU leaders got the message (as much as France and Germany may be against a
"Europe without borders"). Pragmatically, most EU leaders know very well that
they need excellent relations with Turkey to one day have access to the Big
Prize, Iranian gas; and that puts Europe's energy and EU membership
inclinations at loggerheads.
Last July in Ankara, Nabucco was formally launched by an inter-governmental
agreement. The representatives of Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and
Hungary were there. Obama's special Eurasian envoy, Richard Morningstar (a
veteran of the BTC adventure), was there as well. The Central Asian stans were
not there.
But crucially, Gurbanguly, ever the showman, finally made an entrance without
ever leaving Turkmenistan, (almost) uttering the magic words in a meeting with
his ministers in the capital, Ashgabat, on July 10: "Turkmenistan, staying
committed to the principles of diversification of supply of its energy
resources to the world markets, is going to use all available opportunities to
participate in major international projects - such as, for example, [the]
Nabucco project."
At the Vienna headquarters of Nabucco the mantra remains: this is "no
anti-Russian project". Still, everyone knows that Russia's leaders are eager to
kill it, and not a soul from Brussels to Vienna, Washington to Ashgabat, knows
how to link Central Asia to Europe via a non-Russian pipeline, at the cost of
more than $10 billion, without some assurance that Turkmeni, Kazakh,
Azerbaijani, and/or Iranian natural gas will be fully (or even partially) on
board. Who would be foolish enough to invest that kind of money without some
guarantee that hundreds of miles of aluminum tubes won't remain empty? You
don't need Verdi to tell you this is one hell of a quirky plot for a global
opera.
Pepe Escobar is the author of
Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble
Books, 2007) and
Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book,
just out, is
Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2009 Pepe Escobar.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch)
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