After decades of haggling, the five countries with Caspian Sea coasts seem close to agreement over who owns what in the world’s largest lake.
An accord would not only clarify oil and gas rights but also accommodate development of a long-discussed pipeline to carry gas from Turkmenistan to Europe via Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Leaders of those countries and of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Iran will meet in Aktau Aug. 12 in the fifth summit on the Caspian’s legal status since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Foreign ministers of those countries last December raised hope for an accord by declaring they had resolved the many traditional points of conflict. Not least among those is whether to treat the Caspian legally as a sea or as the lake that, technically, it is.
Hope grew further in late June, when Russian authorities published a final draft of the convention awaiting signatures in Aktau.
The draft defines territorial waters as ending 15 nautical miles from coastlines, with fishing rights extending seaward a further 10 nautical miles.
It provides for sharing among the littoral nations of resources in the rest of the sea. Besides proved and probable reserves estimated by the US Energy Information Administration at 48 billion bbl of oil and 292 tcf of natural gas, Caspian resources include a fishery accounting for more than 80% of the world’s supply of sturgeon.
According to the draft, signatories would be able to approve marine pipelines bilaterally, giving new life to plans for the Turkmen gas pipeline and an oil pipeline between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
This represents an important concession by Iran and Russia, which have demanded until now that any new trans-Caspian pipeline win approval of all five littoral states.
In return, Iran and Russia appear to have won a provision excluding foreign military presence in the Caspian.
Ratification of that provision would endorse Russian military domination of the Caspian and add a chilly dimension to whatever pipeline construction may be in prospect.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted July 27, 2018; to comment, join the Commentary channel at www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity)
