On 12 August, after 22 years of negotiations, the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea was finally signed in Aktau, Kazakhstan.
The UN Secretary General António Guterres described the adoption of the document as a historic event and many experts rushed to announce that gas pipelines can be installed along the Caspian Sea bottom without the consent of all the parties.
“The Convention entitles the Caspian states to install trunk submarine pipelines along the seabed.In the meantime the consent of the remaining “five” nations is not required, — a correspondent of “Meduza” Dmitry Kartsev says.
According to a “Fergana” reporter Aleksandr Rybin,“the important accomplishment of the Convention is that the coastal nations can install pipelines on the bottom of the Caspian Sea only with the consent of the country along the seabed of which the pipeline will be built.
As regards the neighbouring countries, they should simply be notified about the construction of the pipeline”.
Does this imply that Turkmenistan can now build the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline to Azerbaijan unhampered? This is what Baku and Ashgabat, which had previously claimed that the consent of two countries was sufficient to install the pipeline, were striving for. In fact, this is not exactly the case.
“Chronicles of Turkmenistan” reviewed the text of the document.
Out of 24 Articles of the Convention three clauses of Article 14 are devoted to pipelines:
Article 14
The Parties may lay submarine cables and pipelines on the bed of the Caspian Sea.
The Parties may lay trunk submarine pipelines on the bed of the Caspian Sea, on the condition that their projects comply with environmental standards and requirements embodied in the international agreements to which they are parties, including the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea and its relevant protocols.
Submarine cables and pipeline routes shall be determined by agreement with the Party the seabed sector of which is to be crossed by the cable or pipeline.
In the meantime, after the legal status of the Caspian Sea had been defined, pursuant to clause 1 the stakeholders were given a hypothetical opportunity and legal framework to work on further pipeline agreements.
Clause 3 runs that the pipeline route is determined only with the consent of the countries along the seabed of which the pipeline will be built. However, it is important to bear in mind that agreeing the route and the fact of the gas pipeline approval are not the same thing.
Clause 2, pursuant to which ALL five countries must approve the construction project after they make sure the project is environment friendly, is much more important.
In other words, Russia and Iran, which are not among the supporters of the Trans-Caspian pipeline, will still have the leverage.It might take a long time to carry out the environmental evaluation of the pipeline, thus preventing the launch of construction works.
At the same time, a refusal can be presented without any confrontation or conflicts, simply by delicately referring to the possibility of damaging the marine environment.It is impossible to ensure the complete safety of a gas pipeline and exclude all risks for the environment.
The second important issue for Turkmenistan, which many experts had been expecting to resolve after the Convention signing, is disputable gas fields. However, only one clause in the document is devoted to this problem:
Article 8
Delimitation of the Caspian Sea seabed and subsoil into sectors shall be effected by agreement between States with adjacent and opposite coasts, with due regard to the generally recognized principles and norms of international law, to enable those States to exercise their sovereign rights to the subsoil exploitation and other legitimate economic activities related to the development of resources of the seabed and subsoil.
In fact, there has been no progress in this issue you can review it for yourself.
If, as viewed by experts, Russia has benefited from signing the Convention by prohibiting the presence of national armed forces on the territory of the Caspian Sea, it is not clear so far what advantages there are for Turkmenistan.
Perhaps it is not by chance that in the run-up to the meeting in Aktau a “Gazprom” official unexpectedly announced that the company was interested in resuming negotiations with Turkmenistan on the import of Turkmen gas?
The situation may be partially clarified after the meeting of Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Vladimir Putin, which is scheduled to be held on 15 August.