Barroso on Caspian trip to promote gas pipeline
Commission president seeks support for EU-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project.
José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and Günther Oettinger, the European commissioner for energy, are on a three-day visit to countries around the Caspian Sea, to promote the EU-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project.
In Azerbaijan today (13 January), Barroso is scheduled to sign a declaration with President Ilham Aliyev expressing shared commitment to the ‘southern corridor’, which is supposed to bring Caspian gas to EU markets.
Azerbaijan is expected to decide by the end of March how much gas it wants to commit to the planned Nabucco pipeline from its Shah Deniz II gas field. Two other pipeline projects in the southern corridor, the Turkey-Greece-Italy Interconnector (ITGI) and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), are competing for gas from the field.
The second stop of Barroso’s and Oettinger’s tour, Turkmenistan, is more sensitive, according to diplomats, because of the country’s dubious human-rights record. On Saturday, the two EU officials hope to sound out Gurban-guly Berdymukhammedov, Turkmenistan’s authoritarian leader, on his intentions for the future of Turkmen gas exports. “Turkmenistan has sent sometimes mixed signals so it is very important for Barroso to see Berdymukhammedov and assess the situation,” an official said. He said that Turkmenistan was eager to find customers other than Russia’s Gazprom, which buys Turkmen gas at low prices and sells it to Europe at a large profit.
However, it is unclear whether this alleged eagerness will translate into a commitment to Nabucco, as other routes are more advanced. A gas pipeline linking Turkmenistan to China went online a year ago. Turkmenistan also hopes to export gas to Pakistan and India through a pipeline across Afghanistan; an agreement between the four governments was signed last month.
Border row
Any gas deliveries to Europe from Turkmenistan will require the construction of transmission capacity across the Caspian to Azerbaijan. The Turkmen government’s commitment to such a pipeline is unclear, although it has spoken of operations commencing in 2016-17, when Nabucco is scheduled to come on-stream. An ongoing dispute between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan over the exact location of their Caspian border has further complicated the scenario, and has held up development of offshore gas fields.
A controversial Partnership and Co-operation Agreement between the EU and Turkmenistan, signed in 1998 but in limbo for more than a decade because of humanrights concerns, is now approaching ratification. Members of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee are to vote on the agreement on 26 January, and a plenary vote has been scheduled for early March.
Human-rights campaigners have criticised the move, and point to Azerbaijan as an example of political reform stalling despite a decade of EU engagement through a similar agreement.
Jacqueline Hale, a policy analyst at the Open Society Institute, a think-tank, said: “It is unwise for the EU to give up its leverage through unconditional engagement with a government that has no respect for human rights and the rule of law. The EU risks gaining little energy security in return for giving up its fundamental values.”
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