Caspian Sea energy nations showed this week they remain close to Moscow's sphere of influence as some key producers declined to sign a declaration calling for a limit on Russian monopoly over export routes to the West. The harshest critics of Moscow's energy policies called for greater diversification of oil and gas supply routes to Europe at an annual summit on Friday involving former Soviet states, Poland and representatives of the United States.
But key energy reserves holders Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan did not sign a final declaration on Friday while host state Azerbaijan, which also holds a big chunk of Caspian energy resources, said it welcomed competitive projects.
"We have agreed to continue efforts... in realisation of joint projects directed to the strengthening of energy security of Europe, especially gas transit projects, including those across the territories of Georgia and Turkey," said the final declaration.
Reuters and some other foreign media were denied access to the summit, attended by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, Turkey and Lithuania and senior officials from the United States, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Hungary and Estonia, Greece, Romania and the European Union.
The sharpest criticism of Russia's energy policies came from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who said Russia wanted to take control of the Caspian Sea energy region by 2013, according to Azeri state media. A pipeline that crosses Georgian territory from Azerbaijan to Turkey was just 60 km from the fighting between Russian and Georgian forces during August's conflict.
"Monopolism in the gas sphere is unacceptable," state television showed Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus as telling the summit. The United States Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told the summit that the war in Georgia "showed the importance of the diversification of energy". "I believe that the new US administration will continue to strongly cooperate with the countries of the region in the energy sphere," Bodman said.
Azerbaijan is the only ex-Soviet state which supplies large amounts of crude and gas to world markets bypassing Russia thanks to the BP-led Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey and a BP and StatoilHydro-led gas link to Turkey. A flurry of other alternative projects that would escape Moscow's grip over energy export routes have been masterminded in the region in the past decade, but they have been on ice for years either due to financing problems or the lack of resources to justify their construction.
"Projects on the Caspian Sea are open for cooperation. Any country can take part in them. They do not contradict each other, they should compete," Azeri president Ilham Aliyev said. Among the projects backed by Moscow's critics was the US-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project that would bypass Russian territory to supply Europe.
But Azerbaijan is currently negotiating whether to sell gas to Europe or to Russia, which has offered to buy all of Azeri gas at market prices and argues that Nabucco would never be built because Azerbaijan lacks enough gas. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are selling most of their oil and gas to Russia or export it via Russian territory and have limited options to diversify export routes in the near future.
Ukraine aspires to cut dependence on Russian oil when it launches the Odessa-Brody pipeline which would ship Azeri oil to Poland and central Europe. Azerbaijan has been promising to supply volumes for the pipeline for years but a final deal has never been signed.