Azeri Leader on Quest for Kazak Oil

Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliev is unlikely to succeed in his latest mission to persuade Kazakstan to export more of its oil and gas via his country, which would mean bypassing Russia, say NBCentralAsia experts.



Visiting Kazakstan on August 7-8, President Aliev signed five agreements with his Kazak counterpart Nursultan Nazarbaev, including energy and transportation issues.



NBCentralAsia observers say that Aliev is trying to get Kazakstan to take part in western-led projects to get Caspian oil and gas to Europe without transiting Russia.



Political analyst Eduard Poletaev sees Aliev playing the role of “the new envoy of the West”, trying to coax the Kazaks into diversifying their export routes in directions that would favour European customers.



At a June 19 summit of the GUAM grouping which involves Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, Aliev proposed that pipeline and other infrastructure located on member states’ territory could be used to take Kazak oil and gas to Europe. Azerbaijan would like Kazakstan to join GUAM’s main collective project, the Odessa-Brody-Gdansk pipeline, which would go from the Black Sea via Ukraine to Poland.



However, European attempts to entice Kazakstan to join pipeline projects conceived as alternatives to the Russian route have had a signal lack of success. Polish president Lech Kaczynski left empty-handed when he visited Astana in April Caspian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Russia through Kazakstan. The following month, Nazarbaev failed to turn up for an informal energy summit in Krakow, organised by Poland and Ukraine, which discussed ways of overcoming dependence on Moscow’s energy export routes.



Poletaev says that as Kazakstan’s Caspian neighbour and one of its current export routes, Azerbaijan has a better chance of influencing Astana.



He believes that the main focus of the present talks is on encouraging the Kazaks to send some of their oil through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which Azerbaijan is currently unable to fill to capacity despite being an oil-rich country.



Aside from the issue of oil pipeline routes, Kazakstan is also displaying a reluctance to go ahead with a major gas export project, the Transcaspian Gas Pipeline. While it hangs back and watches to see whether the pipeline will actually go ahead before making any commitment to supply it with fuel, potential investors are unlikely to start work until they have got some guarantees from the main Central Asian gas producers, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)