Once again about the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, despite the pandemic
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, a sharp decrease in business activity, oil and gas quotations, expert community continues to discuss the new oil and gas projects, capable to change the energy map of Europe and the world.
It is clear that the pandemic, whatever scale it would not be, sooner or later it will end and any economic recession bears in itself signs of future uplift. So, the American expert in the Caspian region Luke Coffey (Director of the Centre of Douglas and Sarah Allison foreign policy, a board member of the Caspian Policy Centre) at the site of the Heritage Foundation has published an article in which analyses the situation around the possible building of the oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia in the western direction through the Caspian sea.
This article was published by the daily interactive edition "Zavtra.ru". We believe that the publication is of interest for readers of ORIENT in that part where the author analyses the situation around the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline. His judgements on this problem are not indisputable, but are interesting.
The expert has given the particular attention to this project, having noted that the idea of building of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Azerbaijan to Europe was put forward yet in the 1990-ties. The parties interested in its building were then rather close to realisation of their intentions. However, the strategy of some coastal countries and the situation in the world were such that the issue was postponed till the best times.
With coming of the new administration to Washington the “topic” of the Caspian Sea got again urgency. During his presidential term Donald Trump has not once addressed to straight lines in support of building of pipelines from the Caspian region.
After signing of the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea in 2018 (the convention provides a possibility of the laying of pipelines on the bottom of the Caspian Sea), the USA and its business circles continued to search for new directions for strengthening of cooperation with Turkmenistan. The US president stated that after the legal status of Caspian Sea was defined, Turkmenistan can use new possibilities of export of gas to the West.
However, at that time, while the high-grade pipeline delivering natural gas from the eastern coast of the Caspian sea to the western cost is not present, the American expert proposes Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to concentrate on the building of a smaller pipeline, namely a connecting link between sea gas deposits in Azerbaijan and an offshore gas deposit of Livanov Bank in Turkmenistan.
According to Luke Coffey, the building of such link will allow to solve a number of actual problems. «It would be a tangible, fast and accessible way to show that the eastern side of the Caspian Sea can be connected to the western side of the Caspian Sea by the pipeline for delivery of natural gas. The building of a connecting link between gas deposits of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan with a length of about 42 nautical miles can be carried out for 500 million dollars - in comparison with approximately 1,5 billion dollars for the high-grade Trans-Caspian pipeline», - the expert writes.
The Caspian region remains the territory of the big geopolitics, as well as a competition, Luke Coffey marks in conclusion.
For information: The Heritage Foundation- founded by Edwin Feulner in 1973 as an analytical centre. The foundation has co-operated with the USA government since Ronald Reagan and including Donald Trump for whom the "Heritage" performed analytical and expert work of strategic planning in the field of internal and foreign policy.
Nury Amanov
