Russia, The War of The Pipelines - JRL 5-19-07

Russia, The War of The Pipelines - JRL 5-19-07

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: The War of The Pipelines
Introduced by Vladimir Frolov
Contributors: Sergei Shishkarev, Andrei Lebedev, Andrei Tsygankov, Andrei Zagorski

This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin personally engaged in some high-stakes diplomacy in Central Asia to ensure that the bulk of hydrocarbon exports from the three Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan go through Russia rather than bypass it.

Putin spent a total of five days in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan working on an agreement to build a major gas pipeline running along the coast of the Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and then merging with Russia’s Gazprom pipeline system to carry Central Asian gas, the bulk of which would come from Turkmenistan, to European markets. Gazprom will invest in the construction of the new Caspian Pipeline System, which will reach a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters a year. Construction will start in the second half of 2008.