Nothing gets oilmen more excited than the idea of building pipelines from exotic, hard to reach places to seaports where the product of their endeavors can be shipped to lucrative foreign markets.

 

Previously divided between the USSR and Iran, now five nations rim Caspian Sea shore-Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran.

 

Of the quintet, all for the former Soviet Socialist republics have benefited from selling their wares to hungry Western investors.

 

 

 The Caspian basin has used more pipeline reveries than any other part of the world.  Some of these have come to fruition, most notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which now pumps roughly one million barrels a day of Azeri crude oil to Turkey's Mediterranean deep water port at Ceyhan.

 

Two other pipeline projects exploiting Caspian reserves remain as yet unfulfilled – the grandiosely named Nabucco natural gas pipeline, designed to bring Caspian natural gas to lucrative markets of eastern and central Europe, and the Trans-Afghan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, designed to bring the riches of Turkmenistan's vast natural gas fields to the booming Pakistani and Indian energy markets.

 

Both pipelines are a long shot at best. The Nabucco pipeline, designed to transmit roughly 30-35 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year, at present has promised throughput  of only 7 billion bcm per year of Azeri natural gas, produced by Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz offshore Caspian field. None of Nabucco’s myriad numerous supporters have yet to explain where the remaining deficit of throughput will come from. Many optimists believe that somehow an undersea Caspian natural gas pipeline will be constructed from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan conveniently overlooking the fact that the Caspian seabed, 20 years after the collapse of the USSR, has yet to be definitively divided among the five coastal states.

 

TAPI suffers from similar dreams of grandiosity. 

The newest proposed pipeline from the Caspian is, according to the Teheran Times, Iran, Iraq, and Syria signing a deal for the construction of the Middle East’s largest gas pipeline, which would transit Iranian gas from Iran’s South Pars gas field to Europe via Lebanon and the Mediterranean.

 

Iran is currently OPEC's third largest exporter, with an output of roughly 4.5 million barrels per day. Many analysts believe that Iran could easily double this output if U.S. sanctions were lifted and foreign investment was allowed freely into the country's energy industry.

 (Source: OilPrice.com)

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