Caspian Pipeline Risks Under Scrutiny

A February 28 conference in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat will discuss the environmental impact of laying pipelines under the Caspian Sea. The event is seen as an attempt by Turkmenistan’s government to win support for the proposed Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, TCGP, by dispelling fears about potential damage to the inland sea.

TCGP is key to Turkmenistan’s plans to export gas to Europe without remaining reliant on Russia as a transit route. Crossing the sea to Azerbaijan, the gas would be piped through that country and Georgia to feed into the planned Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to Europe.

In early February, President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov instructed officials to bring in leading environmental and pipeline experts so that Turkmenistan could benefit from global best practice.

Aside from the technological challenges, any pipeline project involving the Caspian will run into trouble because since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the five states around the sea have failed to reach agreement on who owns which parts of it, or how its resources should be shared.

Turkmenistan argues that TCGP only needs the consent of the states through whose waters it passes, and Azerbaijan appears to agree. However, ownership of offshore waters in this part of the Caspian remains disputed by Iran.

The two biggest states, Russia and Iran, have their own outlets overland and sea, whereas for Turkmenistan and Kazakstan, the Caspian is potentially an important export.

“It’s about preventing exports of Central Asia energy resources if they don’t go through Russia or Iran,” Rovshan Ibrahimov, head of the Energy Research Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan, said. Moscow and Tehran, he said, “want to continue controlling hydrocarbon resources supplies from the region, or to be the country through which they transit.”

Some environmentalists argue that TCGP carries too many risks. One expert in Ashgabat believes the pipeline would raise ambient water temperatures by one or two degrees, endangering marine life. In addition, he said, there is the risk of accident, as the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico showed.

“Even at the moment, there are frequent reports of mass deaths of [Caspian] birds and seals. What will happen if the pipeline is built?” he said.

Ibrahimov is more optimistic, saying modern technology has allowed pipelines to be built in more challenging environments than the Caspian region, such as the Nord Stream route across the Baltic Sea and Blue Stream which carries gas from Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea, where the water contains more corrosive elements.

“So far, there have been no serious problems with those pipelines,” he added.

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.