Thread: The Great Game continues-Central Asia

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KG15Ak01.html


Central Asia, Middle East, all depends on what direction you're looking. Two different articles on Nabucco pipeline this week in Asia Times.

on Monday a galaxy of European statesmen gathered under chandeliers in the banquet hall of the newly built Rixos Hotel in Ankara, Turkey, to sign an inter-governmental agreement formally launching the Nabucco project. United States President Barack Obama's special envoy on Eurasian energy issues, Richard Morningstar, was in attendance at the ceremony, affirming in unmistakable terms that Nabucco is every bit an American political venture.

Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary signed the document on Nabucco. The project, estimated at US$11 billion, will initially transport Central Asian gas by a new pipeline bypassing Russia, via Turkey to Austria and Germany through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.

The 3,300-kilometer pipeline, with four entry points into Turkey, will ultimately source from diverse places such as Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Turkmenistan and be able to pump ...5% to 10% of the total gas consumption in the European Union (EU) by 2020. Construction work is scheduled to commence in 2010 and the pipeline will be fully operational by 2014.

Nabucco's viability critically depends on gas supplies from Turkmenistan and Iran.

Tehran has decided that come what may, Nabucco offers a fantastic means of entering into a strategic partnership with Europe in a near-term scenario.

The current US position is that it will not support Iran's involvement in Nabucco until Tehran "changes its policies". Last month, Morningstar said Iran could only join Nabucco after the normalization of ties between Washington and Tehran.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KG16Ag01.html

...the transit agreement is as much a political declaration as an economic document, perhaps even more so.

Turkmenistan's announcement that it is increasing its exports to Iran from 8bcm/y to 14 bcm/y represents only the fact that consumers in northern Iran desperately need the gas and not the inevitability of Iran's becoming a transit state.

Indeed, Turkey's past experience with Iran, from which it has imported gas for some time, has not been propitious, as planned volumes have rarely been attained and Tehran has shown itself to be unreliable in matters of respecting agreed price and quality contracts.