The Trans-Afghan pipeline project: History, stakes and perspectives

Résumé du document

World competition around the natural resources of Central Asia and the Caspian is not new, but the collapse of the Soviet empire has revived it. This region, believed to possess huge oil and gas reserves, is also a point of contact of different civilizations and an arena for several competing powers: Russia, Iran, China and India, as well as the United States. The September 11 attacks have not only transformed Central Asia into a battlefield of the Global War on Terror, but also reasserted its importance as a potential energy supplier alternative to other US “allies” who proved to be less reliable. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the region and in the world. But this unfortunate nation also seems to hold the key of this new “Great Game” played between regional and world powers. Indeed, Afghanistan has an obvious strategic position between the Caspian energy reserves and the Indian Subcontinent with its energy-hungry economies. Considering US constant policy of isolation of Islamic Iran and Russia's unaltered thirst for domination over its former empire, the Afghan corridor has been quickly identified as a promising way for the export of Caspian hydrocarbons to the South Asian market – a new Silk Road, some would say. Yet, more than a decade after the first tangible Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP, also standing for Turkmenistan - Afghanistan - Pakistan) project, construction has not begun and no one would bet on a date even today.

Extraits

[...] Currently, all Central Asian states back Turkmenistan's pipeline, stressing again the importance of this project for the entire region. Finally, the US is committed to the establishment of a stable and prosperous democracy in Afghanistan, which could be a powerful signal for the region and a major victory in the War on Terror. Today Afghanistan is still a battlefield but the enemy is loosing ground every day, and seems to have already lost any kind of popular support in this country (which is not true in Pakistan). [...]

[...] Despite the continuing Afghan civil war, the project seemed promising enough to decide Unocal to take the lead and sign first a contract with Turkmenistan and Pakistan. Niyazov's desire of a closer relationship with the US, as well as the arrival in power of a new government in Islamabad, played in Unocal's favor and after a bitter confrontation in court, the original pipe-dreamer Bridas had no choice but to let Unocal continue its project[ix]. Now Unocal had to deal with the Afghan mess, but had on its side the US State Department, which also provided critical support in its lobbying against Bridas in Pakistan. [...]

[...] 1st http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2368620 [xxvi] The Financial Times, Dangerous game: China and Russia revive their interest in Central Asia, June 18th, 2004: question of whether this coddling of dictators is a sensible way of promoting political stability and economic progress is quickly answered: it has failed to bring prosperity or reform to the Middle East and Africa and there is no reason it should work any better in Central Asia.” [xxvii] The Financial Times, Unfinished business in Afghanistan, Feb 10th [xxviii] Professor N. Gvosdev's class: Soviet and Post-Soviet Foreign Policy. [...]

[...] m. of gas and sold 5 billion cu. m. to the Russian monopoly. Its production is expected to reach 90 billion cu. m. (i.e. [...]

[...] This analysis, to some extend correct, becomes less representative of the Afghan reality day after day, especially since the October 2004 presidential election and the dramatic decrease in terrorist activity that followed. Even if the environment remains far from ideal, it is expected to improve with time. Moreover, during the 1990s civil war, oil companies interested by the TAP project expressed readiness to pay their own security forces to protect the construction of the pipeline from the fighting. Finally, today the TAP project lacks something it had in the 1990s: an interested foreign investor. [...]