From "Luigi De Martino" To "Julia K. Steinberger" Subject FW: Central Asia: One Side of Modern Lifeline - the Pipelines Show full header ----- Original Message ----- From: Worldsecuritynetwork To: Thania Paffenholz Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 5:22 PM Subject: Central Asia: One Side of Modern Lifeline - the Pipelines World Security Network Foundation, New York, December 14, 2005 Dear Thania Paffenholz, 70 per cent of the world's oil and gas reserves mark the geopolitical significance. The “strategic ellipse,” stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Caucasus and the Caspian region, hosts about seventy percent of the world’s reserves of crude oil and gas. The ever-growing demand for these natural resources in Asia, Europe and America gives these reserves decisive importance for the economic survival of old and newly emerging industrial countries. In the foreseeable future, renewable energy will no longer be able to fill the gap between production and consumption. The curves of declining production and climbing consumption will cross each other. Experts discuss when this crossing will happen. It does not really matter whether there are 30 or 50 years left - it will happen. Beyond this crossing, crises and conflicts will intensify. The competition for crude oil and gas – as well as for fresh water and other strategic raw materials – might even lead to wars. The problems start with the location of the reserves. Most of the oil and gas producing countries belong to the “arc of instability” – often as politically fragile entities. Hurricane “Katrina” has shown us the vulnerability of some production sites as well as the transportation aspect. A regionally and timely limited interruption of production, transport and refining created a crisis with worldwide repercussions. It is impossible to protect all important production sites around the clock. Terrorist attacks can do more harm than “Katrina.” Even worse, production sites in the hands of enemies of industrial countries over a longer period of time would allow political, economic and financial blackmail. The philosophy of “just in time” with fewer reserves in the industrial countries increases the dependence on a timely and affordable energy supply. On the other hand: most of the consuming countries are far away from the source of the natural resources. Many thousands of miles have to be bridged through means of transport. In the past, the transport was done by ships; today and in the future, it will increasingly be done through pipelines. The decision as to where to build the pipelines is highly political and should be based on strategic thinking. The transit is attractive for the transit countries. They receive their share of the revenues through fees they get for the transit. Therefore, Poland and the Baltic states were embarrassed when Germany and Russia announced their plan to bypass these countries with a pipeline through the Baltic Sea. Even more important, the countries through which the pipelines should pass must to a certain degree offer security and stability. In some cases, it is actually more economic to choose a detour of hundreds of miles. But, the pipelines remain vulnerable – as we have recognized in the past. Even the end points of the pipelines – harbors and refineries - are vulnerable. Imran Khan, member of our International Advisory Board, has carefully examined the issue of the pipelines as a lifeline of the modern world, focusing on Central Asia. A similar analysis could be done of the African continent or in South America. In his conclusion, Imran Khan strongly advocates a “grand strategy” in order to avoid crises and conflicts. National interests and the different interests of producers and consumers turn this into a very difficult task. Dieter Farwick Global Editor-in-Chief Worldsecuritynetwork Central Asia: Energy Pipelines or Economic Lifelines? written by: Imran Khan Mr. Lester W. Grau, ‘Hydrocarbons and a New Strategic Region: The Caspian Sea and Central Asia,’ Global Security, Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains, And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about —Christopher Marlowe, ‘Tamburlaine the Great’ Central Asia has been a recurring subject in geopolitics, as Eurasia in geostrategy and energy in geoeconomics. Hardly any other region of the world has been, both overly and overtly, fascinated by cartographers, geographers, geopolitics and geologists alike as Central Asia. It is known to sages of ages, of diverging orientations, of intuitions, of circumstances and civilisations differently for atypical and odd reasons. Ibni Bttuta, the 14th century Moroccan traveler-writer, called it Turkestan (the land of Turks) and Rudyard Kipling, the British imperial great gamer-and epic-writer, dubbed it the ‘Back of Beyond’. To the Greeks and the Romans, it itches the images of classical ‘Transoxiana’ (world beyond the Oxus River or Amudarya); to the English Elizabethans, it reminds of ‘the Tartary’; to the Arabs, it fascinates ‘the Mavarayunneher’ (the land between two rivers—the Syrdaya and the Amudarya). To the enlightened Occident it was known as the barbaric Orient. The Soviets called it ‘the Middle Asia’ and the Eurasianists, such as Mackinder and Brzezinski, lineated it ‘the Central Eurasia.’ Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan—stepped into a new prominence over the turn of the 20th century with the dissolution of the Soviet Union (the eclipse). The Union’s cataclysmic disintegration was epoch-making, riding Central Asia of 125 years of decadence, dislocation, dormancy and dissipation, ushering in the age of renaissance. Central Asia is fast regaining its geopolitical vitality. The geopolitical revitalization is essentially, or eminently, substantiated by energy—crude oil and natural gas—and the corresponding geopolitics. Beside geopolitical and geostrategic importance, the current preoccupation with Central Asia is due to the energy wealth and the export pipelines to offset the geostatic hydrocarbons. Pipelines are the geopolitical anchors. The ongoing geopolitiking over pipelines, allegorized as the ‘New Great Game,’ has been subject to or of a wide-ranging scholastic, generalist and analytical debate—peculiar in itself though part of the world’s energy geopolitics. The newsletter hails pipelines as geoeconomic lifelines. Energy potential and promise of Central Asia, the pipeline spree and the stumbling blocks to routing new pipeline are other sections of the newsletter. The El Dorado: Promise and Potential ...more To read the full text you have to register as subscriber for only USD 99,- for 12 months here! Results of Last Week´s Poll: The elections in Iraq on Dec 15 will be decisive for Iraq and the whole world. What do you expect ? The elections will bring more legitimacy for a new government 56 % Iraq will fall into three ethnic parts 33 % The elections will bring more democracy and stability for the "Broader Middle East" 11 % A civil war will start 0 % Support us ! Forward this newsletter to friends If you do not wish to receive future WSN newsletters, please click here . You can also write to postmaster@worldsecuritynetwork.com © 2005 World Security Network | info@worldsecuritynetwork.com ight 1999-2005 FastMail IP Partners. All rights reserved. Disclaimer