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2 Nabucco: The fat lady has
sung By John Helmer
MOSCOW - It is unclear why a gas-export
pipeline, intended to run from Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan on the eastern shore of the Caspian
Sea, across the seabed, and then through several
Caucasus and Balkan states, to Vienna, should be
named after Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi's opera
of 1842. [1]
One of the most popular
choruses from the opera, "Va, pensiero",
was thought for many years to be the theme song of the
Risorgimento, the movement for
Italian independence from the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, also based, like the pipeline, in Vienna.
Italian audiences used to demand it for an encore
for that reason.
Never mind the encore -
this Nabucco won't make it to overture.
Nabucco, the gas pipeline, has
been intended by US President George Bush, along
with US allies in Turkey and Austria, to avoid
Russian territory and deliver new gas supplies
being lifted in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to
European consumers - without pipeline control by Moscow.
This isn't an opera, however. As
unromantic Russian peasants say, you can't break through a wall
with your forehead.
Russia and Iran can veto
any pipeline laid on the seabed of the Caspian,
because this body of water - once an internal lake
of the Soviet Union, regulated by treaty with Iran
- has not been re-regulated by a definitive
agreement of all the littoral states. Each has
taken a disputable body of water and seabed for a
national economic zone - that means, for oil and
gas drilling.
There has been no agreement
at all on the international body of water in the
middle. On the surface, the Iranian and Russian
navies patrol, outnumbering and outgunning the
boats the US has been supplying Azerbaijan, which
is the least reliable of all the friends the Bush
administration thinks it has made in the region.
But for a few weeks after the death last
December of the Turkmen ruler Saparmurat Niyazov,
the Nabucco chorus believed they might at least
win over his successor, the new President
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. On Saturday, Russian
President Vladimir Putin, Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev and Berdymukhamedov showed
Bush's head, along with Nabucco's, to the wall.
A 10-year-old gas pipeline, running along
the eastern Caspian shore from Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan to Russia, is to be expanded, and will
become the major gas-export route for Turkmen and
Kazakh gas, the presidents of the three countries
agreed. A detailed inter-government pact will
follow for additional signatures before the summer
ends.
Putin said after the signing: "This
is an old pipeline, it was inactive, and our
colleagues in Turkmenistan asked us to begin using
it again. And we are now pumping 4.2 billion cubic
meters through the pipeline and will be able to
pump 10.5 billion. We must rebuild it; we will do
so as soon as possible and build a new branch. And
therefore by 2012 there will be at least an
additional 20 billion."
The negotiating
round among the three presidents took a week -
unusually long and intensive. On the table there
were several competing proposals for constructing
a new gas pipeline from Turkmenistan. Nabucco
offered Turkmenistan a higher unit price for its
gas than the Russians are currently paying, and it
promised to reduce continental Europe's dependence
on Russian gas. OMV, the Austrian state oil and
gas group, is the Nabucco coordinator, and its
plan calls for a pipeline of 3,300 kilometers,
with delivery capacity of 31 billion cubic meters
(bcm) per year.
The Austrians realized
that their heavy up-front investment might expose
them to as much volatility of supply from the
Turkmens and Kazakhs as from the Kremlin. They
also tried offering Russian gas a place in the
project to head off the seabed veto. Recent
comments from Turkey and Austria confirmed that
Gazprom, the Russian supplier, world's largest
producer of gas, has opened talks to supply the
pipeline. Putin will discuss this some more when
he visits Vienna on May 23-24.
Last
weekend's pact, however, will turn Nabucco upside
down, at least from the political point of view.
If the Austrians want Turkmen gas badly, they
won't be able to count on Bush to deliver, let
alone pay for it at the premium Putin and
Berdymukhamedov have decided to share between
themselves. The Austrians will not even be able to
supply the marked-up special steel for the
pipeline.
As European dependants go,
Austria buys 66% of its gas supply from Gazprom
pipelines. To keep the home fires burning, Vienna
has also provided asylum to some of the most
criminal of Russian frauds, and competes
vigorously against France and Switzerland for the
expensive eroto-alpine recreations of the Russian
rich.
The Austrians never stood much
chance with the Turkmens. Last month Putin and
Berdymukhamedov had met in Moscow to discuss
Russian-Turkmen cooperation in energy and other
spheres, and in particular to ensure that
Berdymukhamedov will continue contracts for
purchases and deliveries of natural gas signed
with Niyazov. Currently, Russia buys
Turkmenistan's entire annual gas production at
$100 per million cubic meters, which Gazprom then
exports to Europe at higher prices.
Before
December, Turkmenistan had been negative toward
the Nabucco plan; then between Niyazov's death and
last weekend, it sounded more positive. But this
looks to have been a ploy to pressure Putin into
offering more favorable pricing terms.
Turkmenistan wants to lift its annual gas output
to 100bcm; it currently exports 50bcm through
Russia. Kazakhstan produced 27bcm of gas last
year, and exported 8bcm; it is targeting an
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