The Azerbaijani-Turkish
Trans-Anatolia gas pipeline project (TANAP),
officially launched on June 26, is impacting a
vast field ranging from Turkmenistan, across the
South Caucasus and Turkey, to Central Europe and
European Union authorities in Brussels.
The project encourages Turkmenistan to
pursue a trans-Caspian pipeline to Azerbaijan and
link up with the Trans-Anatolia pipeline. By the
same token, it stimulates the EU to work more
actively with Ashgabat toward that goal, as seen
in recent days. TANAP enhances Georgia's transit
role and, correspondingly, Georgia's significance
to European interests. This project offers Turkey
the chance to become a significant energy transit
(not "hub") country. The Trans-Anatolia project
marks the start of implementing the
EU-desired Southern Gas
Corridor to Europe.
With TANAP, major
Western companies and consortiums find it
necessary to revise earlier decisions, so as to
accommodate the new project. Through TANAP,
countries along the Nabucco-West route
(Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria-Germany) seek a
meaningful diversification of gas supplies to
reduce their dependence on Russia. Just two days
after TANAP's official launching, the Shah Deniz
gas producers' consortium in Azerbaijan selected
Nabucco-West (eliminating British Petroleum's
rival project) to be the route for Caspian gas
into Central Europe.
Baku, which set these
dynamics in motion, is the driving factor of the
Trans-Anatolia project in all major respects.
Azerbaijan came up with the policy initiative, gas
supply commitment, investment capital, project
conception and planning, and effective
decision-making to drive it. Azerbaijan's
initiative with this project reinforces the
country's strategic choice of a Western
orientation.
Baku introduced TANAP when
similar European projects were moribund, without
gas, financing, or any coherent decision-making in
the European interest. Instead of this, four rival
European pipeline projects were competing against
each other - three of them non-strategic or
redundant.
Azerbaijan cut that Gordian
knot with the strategic TANAP project. First
proposed in October 2011, the project gained wide
acceptance within months - an unprecedentedly
short time-span for projects of this scale and
ambition. This project is deemed strategically
necessary and commercially viable, in contrast to
the earlier ones.
The European Commission
regards the Trans-Anatolia project as an integral
segment of the planned Southern Gas Corridor to
Europe. The overall system potentially involves a
trans-Caspian pipeline from Turkmenistan to link
up with TANAP. The Shah Deniz consortium has
already decided to triple the capacity of the
South Caucasus Pipeline (also known as
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline), from seven billion
cubic meters (bcm) to 21 bcm per year, to be fed
into TANAP when the latter is built.
As
planned in Baku, TANAP meets the EU's basic
criteria: a "dedicated" pipeline for Caspian gas
to Europe; carrying non-Russian gas on a route
that bypasses Russia; governed by an EU-compatible
and enforceable legal and regulatory regime in
non-EU territory; registered in the EU; designed
to be gradually scalable for growing gas volumes,
and oriented to European gas markets that require
differentiation of supplies to reduce dependence
on Russia. This latter factor makes Nabucco-West
the logical continuation route of the planned
Trans-Anatolia line into EU territory.
It
is the TANAP project that makes possible and
necessitates the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline's
capacity expansion. Fundamentally, TANAP has
revived the Nabucco project, now reconfigured as
Nabucco-West, to connect TANAP with Central
Europe. With the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, TANAP, and
Nabucco-West pipelines, a complete chain of supply
can result, reaching all the way from the Caspian
offshore wellhead to European buyers.
From
Azerbaijan's national perspective, the
Trans-Anatolia pipeline would organically connect
Azerbaijan via Turkey with Europe (a major
economic and political goal of Baku). It would
turn Azerbaijan into a significant contributor to
energy security in Europe. TANAP would cast
Azerbaijan in the new role as natural gas
exporter, in addition to oil exporter. It can add
a third role for Azerbaijan, as transit country
for Turkmen gas via Turkey to Europe.
TANAP contributes significantly to
cementing Azerbaijan's relationship with Turkey,
economically and politically. This is a
fundamental national-security issue for Baku,
given the challenges it faces in this region.
Azerbaijan was until very recently a pure
"consumer" of Turkish investments, goods, services
and political support. This will continue and even
increase, but Baku is now reciprocating as a
"provider" to Turkey. With Azerbaijani oil and
gas, Turkey achieves its goal to become an energy
transit corridor (an ambition that Ankara pursued
in vain with Russia or other producer countries
until now).
Moreover, Baku is rapidly
emerging as a major source of direct investment in
Turkey. The Trans-Anatolia project (with Baku as
majority shareholder) is worth up to US$7 billion
in investments on Turkish territory. This year,
Baku undertook a further commitment to invest $6
billon in overhauling Turkey's petrochemical
sector. Altogether, Baku plans to invest some $15
billion in Turkey from 2012 through 2017.
The Trans-Anatolia project confirms that
the transit of Caspian energy supplies to Europe
crucially depends on Azerbaijan. Conversely,
without Azerbaijan, no transit project would be
possible between Asia and Europe in the South
Caucasus. Geographically, this proposition held
true all along. But Azerbaijan's role has now
advanced from the merely geographical to the
functional and proactive.
In parallel with
TANAP, Azerbaijan undertakes to finance and
complete the construction of the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku
railroad (with a ferryboat link to the eastern
Caspian shore), connecting the railroad networks
of Europe and Central Asia via Turkey and the
South Caucasus. Thus, Baku initiates and
implements large-scale projects of European
interest from its own natural and investment
resources, and with business rationale buttressed
by strategic rationale.
Vladimir
Socor is a Senior Fellow of the
Washington-based Jamestown Foundation and its
flagship publication, Eurasia Daily Monitor, and
is an internationally recognized expert on the
former Soviet-ruled countries in Eastern Europe,
the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Socor is a
regular guest lecturer at the NATO Defense College
and at Harvard University's National Security
Program's Black Sea Program. He is a Romanian-born
citizen of the United States based in Munich,
Germany.
(This article first appeared
in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with
permission.)
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