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Is the United States fighting for oil or combating terrorism in Central Asia?
A number of recent articles raise questions about the true goals behind
the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.
"Bush’s concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in
the Caspian basin," charged the British tabloid The Mirror.
Other writers point out that Zalmay Khalizad, a member of President
Bush’s National Security Council and the current U.S. envoy to Afghanistan,
used to work on behalf of Unocal, an American oil company, which in 1998 tried
to build a pipeline exporting Turkmen gas through Afghanistan.
Back then Khalizad advocated engagement of the ruling Taliban regime, He
later presided as one of the architects of the U.S. military campaign in
Afghanistan.
The
real story is, as usual, more prosaic. The
actual or potential importance of oil in Central Asia is shrouded in myths and
misconceptions. First of all, the
Caspian is not the next Middle East, nor will the oil there significantly affect
the U.S. supply/demand problem in the long run.
(Caspian Sea natural gas reserves are much more promising but the exports
will primarily go to Turkey, Western Europe and possibly to Asia).
The Caspian countries do not have enough oil to seriously add to the
world’s reserves in the long run, and their impact on oil prices is also
limited (the one exception is Iran, but the bulk of its reserves are far from
the Caspian shores). The potential
contribution of the former Soviet republics to U.S. energy needs is minimal.
The United States still produces about half the oil it consumes, and of
the other – imported – half, most comes from sources in the Americas,
especially from Venezuela and Canada.
The
gap between what the United States produces and what it consumes is expected to
grow. Oil reserves on U.S. territory are increasingly scarce while consumption
is expected to grow by as much as 25 percent over the next 20 years,
necessitating the search for additional foreign sources of oil.
However, much of the increase in imports will come from the Middle East,
which is home to a lion’s share of the world’s proven oil reserves.
The Caspian, with oil reserves roughly equivalent to those of the North
Sea, is simply not in a position to help make up the expected shortfall in U.S.
oil needs. None of the states of
the region are anywhere near the top of the list of countries holding large
proven oil reserves. Saudi Arabia leads with 25 percent of the world’s proven
reserves, followed by Iraq with 11 percent, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and
Iran each with 9 percent, and Venezuela at 7 percent.
Nevertheless,
it is the policy of the United States to diversify world sources of oil, not
only for itself but also for other oil importers. The idea – reduced dependency on any particular region –
thus decreases the possibility that a political upheaval in one country/region
will significantly affect oil supplies and possibly bring about a global
economic crisis. The switch to new
exporters outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also
helps keeping global oil prices down. "The
addition of Caspian oil could weaken the OPEC monopoly, providing greater
leverage over the pricing policies of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries,
ultimately contributing to lower world oil prices," one American expert
told the U.S. House of Representatives. Moreover,
American firms are among the world’s largest oil producers, and their
interests in developing and exporting Caspian energy resources neatly coincide
with the U.S. desire to add to the world’s sources of oil.
The
task of developing Azeri or Kazakh mineral riches, however, requires a lot more
than simply opening doors for U.S. oil companies to the producer countries.
The Caspian is a treacherous territory for doing oil business.
Most of its oil deposits are under water, and the actual legal status of
the Caspian Sea has yet to be defined 11 years after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. In fact, the Caspian is
considered a sea by some countries and a lake by others.
An April 2002 conference of the presidents of the five littoral states,
which was meant to divide up the sea’s surface and bed, ended in acrimony.
Ownership of a number of oil fields is being disputed – Azerbaijan and
Turkmenistan went to court over one such field, and in summer of 2001 the
Iranian Navy forced a British Petroleum exploration vessel from a disputed area
near the Azeri-Iranian border. Producers
are understandably shy about investing millions of dollars into wells that could
be expropriated or destroyed in an attack.
Exporting
the region’s oil is also proving a challenge.
The shortest route connecting the Caspian oil to the world’s shipping
routes leads across Iran. But the
U.S. embargo on trade with and investment in Iran has ruled out this option for
the foreseeable future. The
straight line west – through Armenia – is also out of the question because
of Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s blockade which dates back to the 1994 Nagorno
Karabakh war. A new pipeline is
scheduled to connect Azeri (and possibly Kazakh) oil fields to Turkey via
Georgia but the companies have yet to break ground on this expensive and
somewhat controversial project. Pipelines
across Russia are frowned upon by producer states, but for the time being remain
the only alternative, together with a smaller pipeline running through Georgia. While immensely important to Turkmenistan – and beneficial
to the companies that would build it – the trans-Afghan gas pipeline that
Unocal advocated in 1998 is just a small piece of the overall export route
jumble. It was effectively
abandoned in favor of another route, across the Caspian Sea, long before Sept.
11. Neither pipeline was ultimately
built, not because of the Taliban or geopolitics but because of hesitation by
the Turkmen government and lukewarm interest among energy companies. The interim
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, renewed calls for the trans-Afghan pipeline in
May 2002.
The
U.S. attraction to Caspian oil clearly has its limits. Unlike, for example, Saudi Arabia, the southern region of the
former Soviet Union doesn’t hold enough mineral reserves to be considered
strategic and indispensable to the United States. Other interests argue against too much involvement. Washington
has long been reluctant to offer substantive military aid or deployment of
troops in the Caucasus and Central Asia for fear of alienating Moscow. It was
the terrorist threat, not oil, that created a new mindset after Sept. 11.
Nor were the countries of the Caspian brought into NATO, despite repeated
requests by Georgia and Azerbaijan for inclusion in the alliance.
As the RAND Corporation concluded (before Sept. 11): "NATO and the
West do not have vital interests at stake in the Caspian region… NATO’s
engagement in the Caspian should not command a high priority in terms of
resources, planning, or attention."
It
would be wrong to view the limited of American involvement in the Caspian
exclusively through the prism of oil and gas.
Military assistance and joint training serve a number of other useful
purposes. Prevention of future
conflicts in the Caucasus is a goal in its own right, regardless of the
region’s mineral reserves. Increasingly,
U.S. policy toward the former Soviet South – and U.S. foreign policy in
general – is dominated by a single-minded determination to prevent future
terrorist attacks against the United States.
Oil is no doubt a part of the puzzle that is the U.S. policy toward
Central Asia – but by no means the only, or even the most important part.
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