To All:
By Chris Bird
ALMATY, Nov 14 (Reuters) - They may smile and shake hands in Washington next week, but the U.S. and Kazakh presidents will be far apart on an issue vital to the high-stakes energy game being played out in Central Asia -- Iran.
Rich in oil and gas but landlocked, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia look south to Iran as the shortest route to growing Asian markets.
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are also anxious to end decades of reliance on Russian pipelines for oil and gas exports and to build a firm economic foundation for their fragile independence.
No country is more anxious than the United States to help them attain their strategic goal.
But U.S. sanctions against Iran, which it accuses of sponsoring terrorist groups, see the potential export route jammed. Investment greater than $20 million by U.S. companies in Iran's oil and gas sector is illegal.
"If you're asking me whether our Iran policy ties us down in Central Asia, yes it does," said a U.S. official on condition of anonymity.
A bumper sticker handed out to visiting dignatories to the U.S. embassy in Almaty sums up neatly that country's answer to its policy tangle on oil transport from the region: "Happiness is multiple pipelines."
U.S. oil major Unocal Corp will form consortia early next year to build oil and gas pipelines to Pakistan via Afghanistan -- war permitting.
The China National Petroleum Corp aims to lay an oil pipeline from oil fields in western Kazakhstan to Xinjiang Province by 2002, snaking its way across thousands of kilometres of barren steppe land.
Chevron Corp and Mobil Corp of the U.S., part of a consortium that will eventually produce 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) from its vast Tengiz field in Kazakhstan, are now shipping 165,000 bpd of crude in rail cars for lack of existing pipeline capacity.
A pipeline under the Caspian Sea and on through a "Caucasian corridor" to Turkey is also under consideration.
Oil industry sources say such transport projects, however far-fetched they may sound, bring the region closer to unlocking its oil and gas riches without Russia.
This is important for vast projects like the Karachaganak gas field on which Italy's Agip SpA , British Gas and U.S.-owned Texaco Inc will sign a production sharing deal with the Kazakh government on Nazarbayev's visit.
Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom has refused to export Kazakh gas through its pipeline network to Europe.
But it is transport through Iran that has raised intense interest among oil firms and Central Asian states sitting on billions of barrels of the black gold in the Caspian Sea basin but with no means to export it.
Next month, Turkmenistan opens a gas export pipeline to Iran. Royal Dutch/Shell quietly announced plans this week to construct a pipeline to export 28-30 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas to Turkey via Iran.
On Thursday the Iranian daily Resalat said Iran and Kazakhstan had agreed to resume a two million-tonne annual oil swap. The U.S. government has turned a blind eye to all these projects.
"This is extremely important for us as Iran is the shortest and cheapest export route," said an oil executive, whose company is one of six -- Mobil, Agip, Total SA , a British Petroleum /Statoil alliance and Shell -- which will also sign a production sharing agreement with the Kazakhs in Washington for a large offshore block in the Caspian.
But despite a more moderate government in Iran and heavy backstage lobbying by U.S. oil companies, U.S.-Iranian relations remain sub-zero.
"If Nazarbayev ignores political realities," said Ronald Freeman, managing director of Salomon Brothers International and who keeps a close eye on Kazakh investment possibilites, "the meeting will go nowhere."
e-mail: moscow.newsroom@reuters.com
08:59 11-14-97 |
