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Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline

The Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline is the main infrastructure complex for transporting gas from Turkmenistan to the Chinese region of Xinjiang (via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan). It is managed by the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), together with partner companies of the Central Asian countries. It has a capacity of approximately 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year, equal to approximately 20 percent of China’s energy need. The complex envisages the parallel passage of three gas pipelines covering a distance of 1,830 kilometers between the Turkmen cities of Gedaim (on the border with Uzbekistan) and Hogor, in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The total length of the three pipelines is approximately 3,600 kilometers. The first of the two gas pipelines, line A, was started in July 2008, became operational in December 2009. Line B followed in October of 2010. The two-pipeline system had a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters per year during 2011. Work on a third pipeline, known as line C, started in September of 2012 and was completed at the end of 2013. The pipeline officially entered into operation in 2014, increasing the gas pipeline’s capacity by 25 billion cubic meters per year. In September of 2013, China signed intergovernmental agreements with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kirghizstan for the construction of line D of the gas pipeline, whose construction started on September 13, 2014 and is still in progress. The new gas pipeline will connect the supergiant gas basin of Galkynysh in Turkmenistan to China and will increase the total capacity of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline complex by an additional 30 billion cubic meters per year, reaching a total of 85 billion cubic meters, becoming the largest gas transport system in Central Asia.

Turkish Stream

The Turkish Stream gas pipeline, which is expected to transport Russian gas to Europe via the Black Sea, was first announced in December 2014, during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s historic visit to Ankara. The project was founded after the Shah Deniz consortium, which controls the Azerbaijani field off the Caspian coast, had chosen the Southern Gas Corridor to transport natural gas to Europe. According to Moscow, Turkish Stream would have then had to address the failed construction of South Stream, the large gas pipeline designed to transport gas from southern Russia to Italy via the waters of the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania. However, the project was frozen in November 2015, after the Turkish air force shot down a Russian fighter jet on the border with Syria. This episode abruptly worsened relations between Moscow and Ankara, enough to fear that conflict might develop between the two countries. After the failed coup in Turkey in July 2016, relations between the two countries significantly improved and led to a reconciliation, one sanctioned by a meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and they have therefore relaunched the project. Turkish Stream is expected to be based on a BOT (Build, operate, transfer) funding model and should involve two lines: the first should supply the domestic Turkish market with approximately 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and the second should transport the same amount of Russian gas to Europe.

The Caspian dilemma

The Trans-Caspian gas pipeline project is designed to connect Türkmenbaşy, in Turkmenistan, to Baku in Azerbaijan. Regarded as a natural extension of the Southern Corridor, the pipeline is strongly desired by Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and the European Union, which, in 2011, attempted to launch negotiations to that end with the two former Soviet republics. The project, however, is strongly opposed by Russia and Iran, countries through which Turkmen and Kazakh gas is currently transported to Europe, and which would be bypassed if natural gas were to flow via the Caspian Sea instead. Moscow and Tehran are advancing environmental objections to the laying of underwater pipelines, and also claim that the Caspian is not a sea but a lake, and that, therefore, the exploitation of resources must be unanimously approved by all Caspian bordering countries. In this regard, moreover, Iran is recalling the treaties signed in 1921 and 1940 with the Soviet Union, of which all other countries involved in the negotiations were part. These treaties are still in force and in fact require the unanimity of the bordering states.

If the Caspian is declared a sea, albeit closed, it would be subject to the 1982 Treaty of Montego Bay: the bordering states govern within 12 nautical miles, but beyond these 12 miles they can exploit an exclusive economic zone that can extend for up to 200 miles from the base line. However, if the Caspian is acknowledged as a lake, the coastal states could exercise their exclusive jurisdiction only within the 12 miles, and, beyond this, the exploitation of seabed areas—such as the extraction of resources or the laying of pipelines—would become communal and would require an international authority called upon to coordinate the extraction and division of assets. The lifting of the economic sanctions against Iran in January 2016 led Tehran to the center of the regional geopolitical chessboard. The main infrastructure for transporting Iranian gas to the west is the Tabriz-Ankara gas pipeline, with exports of approximately 10 bcm per year, despite having a capacity of 16 bcm.

Since 2009, Iran has developed various upstream gas projects and, with the lifting of the sanctions, has reached phase 21 of the development of the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf. The country also has huge gas reserves in the deepest part of the Caspian Sea, but does not have the technology required to extract them. Tehran has repeatedly declared its willingness to transport its natural gas to Europe, originally through the—now dismissed—Nabucco gas pipeline project. With the lifting of the sanctions, Iran is now able to relaunch its export policy, but the fall in crude oil prices is driving the country to look to the more profitable Asian markets. In recent months, Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed the impossibility of constructing a gas pipeline to transport gas extracted from South Pars to Europe via Turkey, due to the long distance (1,800 km) and transport costs. The Tehran government has therefore established the development of infrastructure for gas liquefaction as a priority.

At the same time, Tehran and Moscow are pushing for the creation of a North-South Corridor to connect Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, offering new prospects for common energy policies towards Asia and Europe. Iranian President Hassan Rohani and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have met seven times over the past two years, and there are approximately 450 Iranian companies operating in Azerbaijan. The intensification of relations between Baku and Teheran is proceeding on par with the increasingly strong relations between Moscow and Tehran: a framework that could drive Azerbaijan and Iran to join the Eurasian Economic Union, led by Moscow.

TAPI pipeline

Since the 1990’s, there has been talk of a gas pipeline travelling from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, passing through Afghanistan. Back then, under the auspices of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline consortium was formed, led by the U.S.’s Unocal and Saudi Arabia’s Delta Oil. The idea was to transport natural gas from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, thereby creating an alternative route for exports to Europe presently controlled by Russia. In this way, it was thought, Moscow would lose strategic control of the Central Asian republics. But there was a problem: despite the withdrawal of Soviet troops, Afghanistan continued to suffer from the civil war. It was therefore decided to unify the country by using the Students of the Quran, the “Taliban,” using Saudi funding and the military support and intelligence of Pakistan. In effect, the Taliban imposed its control over most of Afghanistan, but their plans did not coincide with those of the U.S. administration. The Students of the Quran formed an alliance with al- Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, launched an air strike directly against the United States, bringing down the twin towers of the World Trade Center and hitting the Pentagon. That was September 11, 2001.

The project was revived in 2010 when the governments of the four countries, affected by the route of the old project, signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline. To date, however, only preliminary agreements have been signed, and $200 million has been allocated to the feasibility study. The 1,800-km long pipeline is expected to start from the Turkmen gas field of Galkynish, located 200 km west of the Afghan border; it will travel 773 km across Afghanistan, crossing the provinces of Herat, Kandahar and Helmand; it will then travel another 872 km across Pakistan, passing through the provinces of Multan and Quetta, and will finally reach Fazilka, a city located in the north Indian province of Punjab.

The resulting pipeline, the cost of which is estimated at approximately $10 billion, is expected to have a capacity of approximately 90 mcm of natural gas per day, which would be distributed as follows: 38 mcm to India, 38 mcm to Pakistan and 14 mcm to Afghanistan, which has, however, recently reduced its requirement to 4 mcm. The main problem is security. Afghanistan is still suffering from an endless armed conflict, the Helmand province is controlled by Islamic extremists, and even the western provinces of Pakistan, the so-called tribal areas, are beyond the control of the government in Islamabad.

The Arctic, the new frontier

The gradual melting of polar ice has sparked the interest of the superpowers towards the world’s most inhospitable region. From the era of the first specific satellite surveys until the end of the ’70s, Arctic ice has lost half its volume, and this trend does not appear to be stopping. In 2007, the European Space Agency (ESA) declared the so-called “Northwest Passage”—that is, the route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific passing through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago into the Arctic Ocean, which has historically been blocked by ice—totally passable. Slightly more complex, however, is the situation of the “Northeast Passage,” the route that reaches the Pacific Ocean, starting from the North Sea and continuing in the Arctic Ocean, along the coast of Siberia, crossing the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea, to reach the eastern coasts of Asia. Until recently, this route was considered dangerous due to the presence of ice and icebergs, and was not included in the ordinary trade routes between China and Europe. The melting of the ice, however, has made navigation possible from July to November, even for normal merchant ships, with great advantages for companies that transport goods from China to Europe. According to climatologists, if global warming continues at the current rate, between 2030 and 2050 the Northeast Passage would become safely navigable all months of the year. Quite a long time, but not that long for the nations bordering the Arctic, which may claim rights over the seas surrounding it, to start doing something to defend their interests.

In twenty years, the Arctic routes could become the world’s main shipping routes, avoiding dangerous bottlenecks such as the Strait of Malacca, which is still infested by pirates; politically unstable or disputed areas, such as the China Sea; passages subjected to heavy freight, such as the Suez and Panama Canals, further decreasing navigation times. There is another factor that makes the North Pole one of the most important geopolitical stages on the planet. According to estimates dating back a decade, 30 percent of all conventional gas reserves are in fact enclosed in the Arctic, 13 percent of which are oil, and which also contain large deposits of a variety of minerals, such as uranium, gold and tungsten. Estimates will certainly be revised upwards, as systematic explorations and, therefore, precise analyses, have never been conducted. The country most interested in knowing the situation is Russia, which already derives approximately 15 percent of its GDP from resources located beyond the Arctic Circle. To give an idea of the stakes, suffice it to say that on June 15, 2016, the CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, said that the potential of the largest oil field off the coast of Western Siberia, in the Kara Sea, is equivalent to that of Saudi Arabia.