Oil
Power Shines Bright
The
Wealth of Central Asia
The
French newspaper Le Monde (Dec. 13), claims that Hamid Karzai, the head of
Afghanistan’s interim government, once consulted for the U.S.-based Unocal
Corporation company.
John
Maresca, Unocal vice president-international relations, describes the company as
"one of the world's leading energy resource and project development
companies. Our activities are focused on three major regions - Asia, Latin
America and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. In Asia and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, we are
a major oil and gas producer."
In
1995, Unocal (formerly Union Oil Company of California) signed a contract to
export eight billion dollars worth of natural gas through a pipeline that would
go from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
In
his February 12, 1998, testimony before the U.S. House Committee on
International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Maresca said,
"As with the proposed Central Asia Oil Pipeline, CentGas cannot begin
construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in
place."
Maresca
stressed the need for "multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and
gas" and the need for "U.S. support for international and regional
efforts to achieve balanced and lasting political settlements within Russia,
other newly independent states and in Afghanistan."
The
international oil industry in the Caspian/Central Asian region was born about
100 years ago with the discovery of oil there. In the intervening years, under
Soviet rule, the existence of the region's oil and gas resources was generally
known, but only partially or poorly developed.
Maresca
had sympathetic ears for developing the region because the oil and gas reserves
of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia, and the George W. Bush
government wanted to change all that.
The
interests of the Bush family and those of their close circle of advisors are
tied to oil. Vice President Dick Cheney was, until the end of 2000, the
President of Halliburton, a company that provides services for the oil industry;
Director of the National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice, was, between 1991
and 2000, manager for Chevron, a corporation deeply involved in Kazakhstan -
"the new Kuwait" - which has vast oil and gas reserves. The
secretaries of commerce and energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham worked for
Tom Brown, another oil giant.
The
Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves, much of them
located in the Caspian Sea basin itself. Proven natural gas reserves within
Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan equal more than 236 trillion
cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion
barrels of oil - enough to service Europe's oil needs for 11 years. Some
estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels.
In
1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day (44 million tons per
year [Mt/y]). By 2010, Western companies could increase production to about 4.5
million barrels a day (Mb/d) - an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15
years. If this continues, the region would represent about five percent of the
world's total oil production, and almost 20 percent of oil produced among
non-OPEC countries.
Central
Asian states are not OPEC members and bagging their oil is akin to union
busting, where non-union products can be had for cheap.
The
U.S. is aware that control over energy is central to control over the world. The
U.S. imports only seven percent of its energy from the Middle East, but holds on
to this vital region in order to control energy sources for Europe and Japan.
Syndicated
columnist Eric Margolis says that according to CIA estimates, when China and
India reach South Korea's level of per capita energy use, within 30 years, their
combined oil demand will be 120 million barrels daily. Today, total global
consumption is 60-70 million barrels a day. In short, the major powers will be
locked in fierce competition for scarce oil, with the Persian Gulf and Central
Asia the focus of this rivalry.
Central
Asia's oil and gas producers are landlocked. Their energy wealth must be
exported through long pipelines. Competition over potential pipeline routes has
become the 21st century's geopolitical equivalent of the great power race to
build strategic railroads, a rivalry that helped spark World War I.
Maresca
told the House that a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best option
with the fewest technical obstacles. It is the shortest route to the sea and has
relatively favorable terrain for a pipeline. The route through Afghanistan is
the one that would bring Central Asian oil closest to Asian markets and thus
would be the cheapest in terms of transporting the oil.
Unocal,
he said, envisions the creation of a Central Asian Oil Pipeline Consortium,
which would become an integral part of a regional oil pipeline system that will
utilize and gather oil from the existing pipeline infrastructure in
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The $2.5 billion
1,040-mile-long 42-inch-diameter oil pipeline - with an estimated shipping
capacity of one million barrels of oil per day - would begin near the town of
Chardzhou, in northern Turkmenistan, and extend southeasterly through
Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan
coast on the Arabian Sea. Only about 440 miles of the pipeline would be in
Afghanistan.
Unocal
is allied with the Turkish company, Koc Holding A.S., which has reported Israeli
connections, in bringing competitive gas supplies to the Turkish market through
the proposed Eurasia Natural Gas Pipeline, which would transport gas from
Turkmenistan directly across the still un-demarcated Caspian Sea through
Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey.
Interestingly,
despite all the negatives attached to the Taliban, especially their treatment of
women, they too had been lobbying Washington. To polish their image in the U.S.,
they even employed an American expert on public relations, Laila Helms - a part
Afghan niece of Richard Helms, a former Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and former U.S. ambassador to Tehran.
Ms.
Helms brought Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, an adviser to Mullah Muhammad Omar, to
Washington for five days in March 2001 - after the Taliban had destroyed the
ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan. According to Margolis, Hashimi met the directorate
of Central Intelligence at the CIA and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research
at the State Department.
Jean-Charles
Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, two French intelligence analysts, in their book,
"Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite" (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth),
describe Ms. Helms as a sort of a Mata Hari.
Brisard
and Dasquie claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to
consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and
gas reserves in Central Asia. They affirm that until August last year, the U.S.
government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stability in Central Asia
that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia"
from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, through
Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
According
to the book, the Bush Administration began to negotiate with the Taliban
immediately after it came into power in February, reportedly telling Taliban
representatives that either they accept the offer of "a carpet of gold or
you'll get a carpet of bombs."
U.S.
and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin
and Islamabad. The last meeting between U.S. and Taliban representatives took
place on August 2, 2001, five weeks before the attacks on New York and
Washington, the analysts maintain. On that occasion, Christina Rocca, director
of Central Asian affairs at the State Department, met the Taliban Ambassador to
Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, in Islamabad. Rocca was previously in charge of
contacts with guerrilla groups at the CIA, where in the 1980s, she oversaw the
delivery of Stinger missiles to Afghan mujaheddin. One need not forget that the
State Department applauded the Taliban takeover in September 1996, five months
after a U.S. assistant secretary of state warned "economic opportunities
will be missed" if political stability was not restored in Afghanistan.
The
Central Asian region, though rich in resources, is landlocked and its energy
resources can only be exploited through pipelines that must cross a few
countries. A safe pipeline can only be guaranteed through having totally
subservient regimes in countries that produce the energy and countries that will
host the pipeline.
The
Caspian Pipeline Consortium, or CPC, plans to build a pipeline west from the
Northern Caspian to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossisk. From Novorossisk,
oil from this line would be transported by tanker through the Bosphorus to the
Mediterranean and world markets.
The
Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), a consortium of 11 foreign
oil companies including four American companies - Unocal, Amoco, Exxon and
Pennzoil - sponsors the other project. It will follow one or both of two routes
west from Baku. One line will angle north and cross the North Caucasus to
Novorossisk. The other route would cross Georgia and extend to a shipping
terminal on the Black Sea port of Supsa.
This
second route may be extended west and south across Turkey to the Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan. However, even if both pipelines were built, they would not have
enough total capacity to transport all the oil expected to flow from the region
in the future; nor would they have the capability to move it to the target
markets.
The
solution: Other export pipelines must be built - a pipeline south from Central
Asia to the Indian Ocean. A potential route south crossing Iran has been ruled
out for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation, and more
importantly, by the Zionist lobby in Washington. Understandably, Iran has
intrigued in Afghanistan since 1989 to keep that nation in disorder, thus
preventing rival Pakistan from building its long-sought Termez-Karachi pipeline.
This is where Afghanistan and Pakistan figure.
The
U.S. and Pakistan have long sought to build pipelines running due south from
Termez, Uzbekistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan, then down to Pakistan's Arabian Sea
ports at Karachi and Gwadar. Oilmen call this route, "the new Silk
Road," after the fabled route used to export China's riches. But this
requires a stable, pro-western Afghanistan.
However,
one of the mysteries of this so-called war on terrorism is that not a word has
been written about Turkmenistan, a country with a 300-mile border with
Afghanistan, almost as if it didn't exist. Turkmenistan sits like a broad ribbon
across Iran's northern border, touching the Caspian Sea on the west and
Afghanistan on the east. Unocal has invested a great deal of time and money in
building a pipeline that would take Caspian Sea gas and oil across Turkmenistan
through southern Afghanistan and to the Arabian Sea ports in Pakistan.
Moscow,
for its part, has sustained the Northern Alliance since 1990 and re-armed it
after Sept. 11 with new tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopters and
trucks. Putin put the chief of the Russian general staff, Viktor Kvashnin, and
the deputy director of the KGB in charge of the Alliance.
During
Balkans fighting in 1999, the hard-charging Kvashnin, who seized Pristina's
airfield, thus assuring a permanent Russian role in Kosovo, did it again. To the
fury of Washington and Islamabad, Kvashnin rushed the Northern Alliance into
Kabul, in direct contravention of Bush's dictates.
The
Russians have regained influence over Afghanistan, revenged their defeat by the
U.S. in the 1980 war, and neatly checkmated the Bush administration that, for
all its high-tech military power, understood little about Afghanistan, writes
Margolis. The U.S. has imposed Karzai, an ally, but Gen. Muhammed Fahim and Gen.
Rashid Dostam, both stalwarts of the old Communist regime with close links to
the KGB, hold the defense portfolios. Is this a coup scored by Putin on the Bush
administration, which was so busy trying to tear Afghanistan apart to find Osama
bin Laden, it failed to notice the Russians - closely allied to India and Iran -
were taking over half the country.
The
hands-off approach adopted toward the Russian campaign in Chechnya may be the
price that Bush has paid to Russia to buy off some of these gains. In turn,
Russian enforced order in Chechnya will help with the pipeline to be built from
the Northern Caspian to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossisk.
Currently,
Russia is unlikely to absorb large new quantities of "foreign" oil,
and is equally unlikely to be a significant market for energy in the next
decade, lacking the capacity to deliver it to other markets. It can best hope to
capture a piece of this pie by hosting a section of the pipeline.
