Tension between Lebanon and Israel over natural gas reserves.
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Lawrence of Arabia
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thabet
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thabet
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thabet
Why was Iraq important to the UK?
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johnpi
Who needs Afghanistan (for oil pipelines)?
The leaders of China and three Central Asian nations gathered Sunday in Turkmenistan ahead of a ceremony inaugurating natural gas deliveries from the energy-rich region to China.
….The pipeline culminates Chinese efforts to secure energy supplies for its fast-growing economy. The route also will enable gas producers in the region to diversify their exports away from Russia, which has exercised a virtual stranglehold over Central Asian energy supplies since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“This is a significant project of cooperation between two nations that will benefit all countries in the region,” Chinese leader Hu Jintao told reporters in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat.
“All countries in the region” except Afghanistan.
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thabet
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johnpi
Yes, that’s why I tagged this post ‘gas’ and with other gas-related tags. ‘Oil’ and ‘oil pipelines’ seems to be common usage though. I try to use phrases that are most likely to be used in Internet searches on the topic.
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Buzz
Unocal entertained the Taliban and flew them to Texas and Washington DC in 1997 to discuss a trans-Afghanistan pipeline. This is pretty well-known.
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Conrad Barwa
Yes, I agree with thabet here; in anycase the UNOCAL and Bridas proposals fell through because the Taliban couldn’t guarantee the adequate level of security for the pipeline and insurance costs for the project were insanely high.
I do disagree though with the idea that Afghanistsan can’t benefit from such a proposal. In fact, I think it might be Afghanistan’s best development hope in the short/medium term given that there is little current viable industry and agriculture is at a low potential which will take years to rebuild. Neither sector has much export potential on a significant scale; acting as a transit country for trade betweenthe CARs and South Asia, as well as being a gas/oil pipeline transit country will allow the govt to collect revenue for reinvestment in social development and utilise Afghanistan’s one natural asset – its geographical position as an entry point between different regions.
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johnpi
A pipeline through Afghanistan into Pakistan would be a revenue-generating project for Pakistan too, which is the primary instigator and backer of the Afghan Taliban movement.
It seems the Pakistani military and intelligence services think Afghanistan is more valuable to them as a back lot for storing their “strategic depth” fantasies…
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Conrad Barwa
Yes, under current conditions that is correct. I think any realistic pipeline project will need a govt in Pakistan that isn’t adopting the current policy. Also since gas is by far the most viable option and its storage costs/difficulties means that it needs to be used at the endpoint of transportation, only India is the nearest market of sufficient size and this requires some sort of Indo-Pak settlement generally and on Kashmir specifically to be feasible. Clearly, we are some way off this.
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thabet
I agree with you that the project would benefit Afghanistan and indeed Pakistan.
Not that you’re disagreeing with me, but just to be clear I was only pointing out:
a. There is nothing conspiratorial about ideas of transporting natural gas through Afghanistan. This idea has been talked about since the 90s, and TAP or TAPI already has backers. This will cost a fortune to design and construct (I speak here as an ‘expert’ I guess).
b. The US does not benefit directly because the natural gas will come to some sort of end user or LNG facility, where it will be sold on the market. The natural gas will not magically end up keeping cold Americans warm during the winter. If anything India or China will end up benefiting.
As far as conspiracies go this is quite lame.
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Conrad Barwa
Yes all fair points I suppose wrt (a) people would argue that there is less of a conspiracy as such, just a lot of opaqueness, back-room dealing and cavorting with unsavoury regimes to reach such a deal. Of course that always happens but it tends to act a lightening rod for CSOs who campaign against that sort of thing.
For (b) there might be some indirect benefits if it is a US company that exploits the gas and runs the pipeline. Broader arguements such as those made by people like Callinicos, is that the US seeks to expand and have military bases in the CARs so that it can have its finger on the gas spigot, the was it does with the oil spigot in the ME. These kind of arguements also depend on assuming that US political economy favours cheap energy prices. One can see the line of debate here, but it is questionable if you don’t share the same assumptions.
Lastly, would a pipeline to China need to go through Afghanistan? I don’t know the geography or the technical aspects, so will defer to those in the know but I would have thought the CARs could route a pipeline to China directly – is this correct?
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thabet
No, they can pipe from Central Asia to China (as is happening right now). I am just looking at the geography. If gas came to some sort of storage terminal in Pakistan through Afghanistan, where can it be shipped to at the lowest cost? The UAE could decide to buy some (like they do with Qatar) to fuel its growth ambitions, but most likely it will go east — India, China, Japan, Korea, etc.
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johnpi
Juan Cole on the China pipeline:
A common explanation for the US presence in Afghanistan is Washington’s interest in Central Asian fuel sources– natural gas in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and petroleum in Kazakhstan. The idea of Zalmay Khalilzad and others was to bring a gas pipeline down through Afghanistan and Pakistan to energy-hungry India. Turkmenistan became independent of Moscow in 1991, making the project plausible. For this reason some on the political Right in the US actually supported the Taliban as a force for law and order.
If that was the plan, it has failed. Instead, China has landed the big bid to develop a major gas field in Turkmenistan, along with a pipeline to Beijing. Turkmenistan had strongly considered piping the gas to Moscow instead, but developed conflicts with Gazprom.
So the US is bogged down in an Afghanistan quagmire, and China is running off with the big regional prize.
….
…the Chinese just demonstrated that you don’t need war to get resources. Avoid costly adventurism and grow your economy like hell, and it all falls into your lap.
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thabet
China goes shopping in Africa again…
China National Offshore Oil Corp. is in talks with Ghana National Petroleum Corp. to make a bid for a stake in the Jubilee oilfield discovery that would rival Exxon Mobil Corp.’s $4 billion offer, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed people familiar with the situation. A Chinese fund is in dicussions with Guinea on possible financing for infrastructure, minerals and oil projects, the Financial Times reported.
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pi.info
Resource curse – excellent tag.
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thabet
Nuclear power law signed:
Washington has promoted its plan to help the Emirates’ develop peaceful nuclear power as a model of the kind of cooperation it would like to achieve with Iran, which the U.S. and its allies suspect is using a civilian program as a cover to develop an atomic weapons capability.
The United Arab Emirates, which is just across the Persian Gulf from Iran, is among those Arab nations wary of Iran’s nuclear work.
Keefie Boy, a former Dubai-based blogger, says of this story:
I can understand his concerns, and, as a commentator at his blog notes, I half expect them to plonk the nuclear reactor on a man-made island!
I am also wondering how closely regulation of the UAE’s nuclear industry will resemble the way its hydrocarbon industry is run…
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thabet
When future historians write about the seemingly inevitable conflict in Iraq between Arabs and Kurds, this sort of news report will form part of the evidence for build up in ethnic tensions:
Iraq’s Oil Ministry, which deems deals the largely autonomous Kurdish region signs with foreign oil firms illegal, had already threatened to blacklist Sinopec, China’s biggest oil refiner, for acquiring Addax Petroleum Corp.
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thabet
This might be another sign that Qatar wants to offer an alternative to Saudi Arabia as a ‘big player’ in the region: Qatar signs a deal with Turkey.
Turkey has the same energy concerns as the EU: Russia’s virtual monopoly over gas into Europe. Of course, Turkey realises it is a geopolitical-energy hub, and alongside deals with Qatar, the EU, talk of one with Iraq, it has signed one with Russia too.
I’d expect any EU-Turkey-Iran deal on Nabucco, an anti-Russian pipeline project and an effort the US supports at the present time, to upset the anti-Iran hawks. India’s stalling on a pipeline from Iran through Pakistan suggests some pressure from the US. But India (and China, which is busy signing deals in Central Asia) would still have energy needs. Expect the conspiracy theorists to be given more grist for their mills, as the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline is resurrected (at least in the media — the engineering of such a pipeline is another story altogether).
Steve LeVine, however, says this sorts of pipeline politics is no longer valuable to the US; events, such as the Russia-Georgia War, China’s aggressive emergence in Central Asia and developments in technology, having overtaken their policy.
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thabet
Sierra Leone and Ghana may just become another two countries with a resource curse:
[...]
Sierra Leone is one of the poorest states in the world and its neighbours to the south are not much better off. Oil production from Ghana’s Jubilee field is yet to ramp up, but the country is quite reasonably concerned that its oil wealth will turn it into yet another country ‘cursed’ by resources – it is not far away from Nigeria, after all, whose sizeable oil reserves have not exactly brought stability or prosperity for most of its people.
Speaking of West African nations ‘cursed’ with oil and mineral wealth:
johnpi, 
thabet, 
Conrad Barwa, and 1 other are discussing. 
While the invasion of Iraq did indeed rest on (the politics of) oil, the ‘Afghanistan-pipeline’ conspiracy theory makes little sense. Yes, a pipeline from Central Asia through Afghanistan has long been talked about, but (apart from being a technical and logistical nightmare to design and construct) China, not the US, would be the real beneficiary.
(Also this was a natural gas, not crude oil, pipeline.)