Environment and Security: Transforming risks into cooperation

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Environment and Security

Striving for energy security The Caspian region

sian Gulf. The latter plan prompted fierce opposition from the British, who saw it as a challenge to their strategic interests, so the pipeline was not built. The competition over oil transport routes in the 19th century bears important similarities with the “pipe- line politics” of the late 20th century, after the disintegration of the USSR. Oil transformed the city of Baku, which by 1908 had a population of 248 300 (Akiner, 2004). By the end of the 19th century Baku had become one of the largest industrial centres of the Russian empire. The first im- portant oil field in Kazakhstan was discov- ered in 1911, east of Guriev (now Atyrau)

The development of energy resources is not a new phenomenon in the Caspian region. Oil (in the form of naphta) has been extract- ed and used for centuries in the Apsheron peninsula (situated in today’s Azerbaijan). From the mid-19th century, oil extraction in the Caspian (especially in the Baku oilfields) became an industrial operation 10 . Western and Russian interests allowed the Baku oil- field to expand and by 1897 it accounted for almost half of global oil production (Djal- ili and Keller, 2003; Akiner, 2004) 11 . Fierce competition over transport routes emerged: north by sea to Astrakhan, west overland to Batumi (and then via tanker to international markets), or south by pipeline to the Per-

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