Turkmen-Azeri Thaw Could Create New Caspian Axis

The re-establishment of relations between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan could bring about a seismic shift in the long-running dispute over the Caspian Sea, NBCentralAsia analysts say.



During an official trip to Baku on May 20 – the first such visit by a Turkmen head of state in a decade – President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov said that the two countries had arrived at a common view on the legal status of the Caspian.



Although none of the seven documents signed during Berdymuhammedov’s visit covered the dispute about how much of the sea belongs to each of the countries around it, the Turkmen leader made it clear he favoured a rapid solution to the question of the Caspian’s legal status. This, he said, would create “favourable conditions” for developing offshore oil and gas resources, in conjunction with international partners.



After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and opportunities arose for offshore development in the Caspian, it became clear that a new treaty was needed to delineate maritime boundaries between the five littoral states – Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Russia. But differences over how the dividing lines should be drawn have left the issue unresolved.



Azerbaijan, like Kazakstan and Russia, favours a plan where a median line would be drawn down the centre of the sea and individual national sectors would then be sliced out on either side of it. For the Azerbaijanis, the advantage of this method is that it would give them the oil deposits they claim.



Iran, with a relatively short coastline, would lose out from a “median” division, and instead wants the sea divided into five equal-sized chunks.



Turkmenistan’s position has shifted several times over the years, at one point coming close to the Iranian view. Currently, it appears to favour the idea of nation sectors as supported by the other former Soviet littoral states, but wants the boundary lines to take into account how close a given oilfield lies to each country’s shoreline.



Resolving these issues has been made that much harder by the political animosity that existed between Ashgabat and Baku over many years. Relations were effectively frozen in 1999, when Turkmenistan closed its Baku embassy and broke off relations because of a dispute about an oil and gas field which the Azerbaijanis called Kapaz and were already developing. The Turkmen named it Serdar and claimed it as their own.



Under new presidents – Berdymuhammedov, elected last year, and Ilham Aliev in Azerbaijan, there are growing indications that the deadlock is being broken.



This could have major implications for the legal wrangling and for the region’s economic future, analysts say.



“The strengthening Turkmen-Azerbaijani relationship, and the possibility that the dispute between the two states over maritime boundaries and oil and gas fields could be resolved positively, would substantially alter the alignment of power in the Caspian region,” said an NBCentralAsia observer in Turkmenistan.



Analysts predict that Ashgabat might sign up to the median-line principle propounded by Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakstan, out of a pragmatic desire to facilitate an increase in its hydrocarbon exports.



“It’s likely that Turkmenistan will leave Iran on its own and that the four littoral states that were once part of the Soviet Union will back conventions which date from that period and have never been annulled,” said a NBCentralAsia observer based in Dashoguz in the north of Turkmenistan.



Other experts agree this is possible. Annadurdy Khadjiev, an NBCentralAsia economic analyst based in Bulgaria, noted that the former Soviet states shared a common history and outlook, so they should not find it hard to reach agreement.



“Our countries are more interested in exploiting the Caspian’s bioresources, energy and transport potential to develop their economies than Iran is,” he said.



Professor Ravshan Ibrajimov, head of the international relations department at Qafqaz University in Baku, pointed out that resolving these issues will boost economic development in the region, and above all in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.



The two states should then be in a position to earn substantial revenues from sharing the development of the Kapaz/Serdar field, which according to some estimates holds 80 million tons of oil and 32 billion cubic metres of gas.



Second, said Ibrahimov, it will become possible to transport oil and gas across the Caspian by tanker. In the longer term, the prospect of an undersea gas pipeline would give Turkmenistan access to the proposed Nabucco pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Turkey; Baku would also benefit because the added Turkmen supply would make the project more viable.



A commentator based in Ashgabat shares this optimistic view, noting that an improved relationship with Azerbaijan is in keeping with the Turkmen government’s “multi-vector” strategy of keeping its export route options as open and diverse as possible.



“Once a compromise has been reached, it won’t be difficult to lay a pipeline between two states that are on friendly terms,” he said.



At the same time, he said, Russia, which currently provides Turkmenistan’s sole significant export route, may place obstacles in the way of options that bypass its territory.



Khadjiev added a warning note, saying it would take time for the thaw in Turkmen-Azerbaijani relations to translate into substantive contacts and talks.



“The caution with which officials attending the summit expressed themselves, and the limited amount of information that came out of it, reflect the fragile nature of this initiative by the two leaders,” he said.



(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)