FYI
Best wishes - Charles
Charles Gurdon
Menas Associates
T: +44-(0)1442-872-800
[log in to unmask]
======================
plattsOilgram News
Monday, October 20, 2003
Volume 81, Number 202
Iran says new stance on Caspian should aid agreements
Cambridge, UK
Iran has considerably revised
its position on the Caspian Sea division,
which should make it easier eventually
to negotiate bilateral agreements with
Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, Iran's deputy
foreign minister Mehdi Safari told Platts
Oct 17.
In the past, Iran has stated that it has a
right to one-fifth of the Caspian Sea simply
by virtue of being one of the five Caspian littoral
states.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference
on the Caspian and Central Asia, organized
by Cambridge University's Judge Institute,
Safari said Iran still deserved about one-fifth
of the sea - or as he put it "twenty something
percent," based on what he considered
to be an Iranian baseline running in a straight
line from Astara on Iran's border with
Azerbaijan across the Caspian to Gazankuli,
on Iran's border with Turkmenistan. He admitted
this concept of a baseline had not
been accepted by Turkmenistan or
Azerbaijan but that they were continuing to
negotiate a compromise on where the baseline
should lie.
At issue is the future of the last big prospect
in the southern Caspian, a field known
by the Iranians as Alborz and Alov to the
Azerbaijanis. Iran is also ready to discuss
possible participation in the Caspian oil field
maritime border dispute. The country, however,
will insist on equity in Caspian oil projects,
if it is invited to join, Safari added.
This was a particular reference to the Alborz
field.
Both Iran and Azerbaijan have at various
times accepted - and rejected suggestions
that a solution to this dispute should be attained
through joint development.
It is hoped that the five Caspian states
will sign a framework convention on the
protection of the marine environment at a
meeting in Tehran in the first week of November,
Russian deputy minister of foreign
affairs, Victor Kalyuzhny, said. The environmental
convention will be the first multilateral
Caspian agreement ever signed by littoral
states, he said.
Kalyuzhny repeated Russia's view that
construction of an offshore pipeline in the
Caspian is "undersirable in principle."
However, he added a compromise might
be reached provided that the project undergoes
an environmental impact assessment
including seismic safe assessments that
would satisfy the five states. Russia proposes
to set up a permanent Caspian environmental
centre to serve as a secretariat for
the framework convention.
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan support that
proposal while Iran and Turkmenistan have
"not come to appreciate the relevance of
Russia's initiative," Kalyuzhny said.
Environmental protection is just one aspect
of a broader Caspian Declaration that
the five states have been negotiating for
some years in an attempt to establish a new
legal status for the offshore which, until the
Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, was owned
and managed by just two countries, the
USSR and Iran.
John Roberts, Isabel Gorst
|
