Thread: It's all about OIL: White Stream: the Strategic Rationale

you want to know why we are arming Georgia and almost 2,000 lost their lives because of a Georgian invasion. Your taxes are paying for Black Water to train the Georgian Army; arm and fit their soldiers to NATO standards that were repelled by Russian Forces... Seems to me we are dirt broke and using our tax dollars for Oligarchs to get rich off of

Southern Corridor, White Stream: the Strategic Rationale

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 200
October 30, 2009 12:07 PM Age: 8 days
By: Vladimir Socor



White Stream, the proposed gas pipeline from Georgia to Romania on the seabed of the Black Sea, is intended to maximize European gas imports from Central Asia through the E.U.-initiated Southern Corridor. The Corridor grand design spans Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and –with White Stream– also a maritime route to European Union territory via the Black Sea. At its other end, the Southern Corridor is premised on a trans-Caspian link to Turkmenistan for massive European imports of Central Asian gas. In an accompanying initiative, the E.U. has created a Caspian Development Corporation, tasked with aggregating European gas purchase offers and presenting them to Central Asian producers.

One year ago E.U. officials integrated White Stream, alongside the Nabucco project and the Turkey-Greece-Italy Interconnector, in the planning work for the Southern Corridor. With a potential capacity in the range of 60 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 120 bcm per year, the Corridor is designed to transport far larger volumes of Central Asian gas than Nabucco’s capacity of 31 bcm per year could alone accommodate.

By integrating White Stream into the Corridor strategy, the E.U. has put an end to speculation about White Stream competing against Nabucco over Azerbaijani gas. At the same time, White Stream can become the answer to Turkey’s abuse of its role in the gas transit to Europe. With Ankara blocking gas transit from Azerbaijan and delaying the Nabucco project, de-monopolization of transit becomes urgent, in line with the E.U.’s diversification goals for sources and routes (EDM, October 29).

Turkey’s AKP government assumes that it holds a monopoly on the transit of Caspian gas to Europe. Ankara seems confident that it can exploit that situation, to the detriment of producer countries and consumer countries alike. Ankara refuses to conclude a European-standard agreement for gas transit from Azerbaijan to Europe. It also insists on buying up Azerbaijani gas at deeply discounted prices. Ankara’s tactics are holding up development at the multinational consortium’s Shah Deniz gas field, the designated source for the first phase of the Nabucco pipeline project. This situation in turn complicates and delays the implementation of Nabucco (EDM, October 21, 22).

The Turkish government persists with this conduct even after having signed the Nabucco inter-governmental agreement on July 13. Ankara’s behavior can only raise uncomfortable questions among potential investors and gas suppliers to the Nabucco and Southern Corridor projects. It also raises these projects’ risk profile from the standpoint of Central Asian and some Middle Eastern gas producing countries, which are weighing the chances of exporting gas to Europe through the Southern Corridor. From these countries’ perspective, and in light of Ankara’s behavior toward its close kin Azerbaijan, the Turkish gas transportation route must appear risky or unpredictable, as long as Ankara remains a transit monopolist.

White Stream’s maritime route provides an option for supplementing, if not replacing, the Turkish overland route for Azerbaijani and Central Asian gas to Europe. Complementarity, even short of replacement, can become an effective de-monopolization tool.

Azerbaijan is the irreplaceable country as a gas producer for Nabucco’s and the Corridor’s first stage. Azerbaijan will again be irreplaceable as a transit country for Central Asian gas, in those projects’ follow-up stages. The Turkish transit route, however, is not irreplaceable and White Stream can demonstrate that point.

Key to success in this strategy are the twin concepts of Big Gas and Effective Corridor, both presupposing a synergy of Nabucco and White Stream, along with other Southern Corridor components. This synergy, if achieved, would maximize pipeline capacity for Central Asian gas to Europe while ensuring a reliable, long-term transportation solution, reducing or minimizing political risks. These conditions are indispensable to gas producing countries and companies and the financial investors in the pipelines (White Stream Briefing Note, October 2009).

As E.U. planners realize, Nabucco alone cannot achieve those risk reduction goals. On the Central Asian side, the prospect of Big Gas is necessary –and almost certainly awaited there– for gas producing countries to conclude long-term supply contracts with Europe. The Central Asians would hardly risk confrontation with Russia for just a few bcm of gas to Europe that Nabucco’s second stage could annually accommodate. By contrast, in a Big Gas relationship with Europe, Central Asian producers could count on massive revenues, security of demand for their gas, and far-reaching emancipation from Russian Gazprom’s monopsony. All this could well induce Central Asian countries to view Europe as a preferred market and open their onshore gas resources for exploration and development by Western companies.

The concept of an Effective Corridor means removing transportation risks westward of the South Caucasus. Watching Ankara’s behavior, Central Asian countries and international companies can only doubt the reliability and predictability of the Turkish transit route to Europe. Even if the trans-Caspian link does materialize, gas producers cannot be certain of accessing Europe via Turkey on fair terms. Central Asian producers, European consumers, and the project companies will need diversification of the transportation routes from the South Caucasus to Europe. They must not depend on one single powerful transit country –Turkey in this case– any more than the Central Asians depend on Gazprom at present in order to access Europe.

Fulfillment of these prerequisites, relating to gas demand and transportation, is necessary for opening Western access to Central Asian gas. The Southern Corridor with its components, including White Stream, is premised on this strategy.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cac ... 6399a84a28

White Stream. Route Options. Option 1

http://www.energy-community.org/pls/por ... /91811.PDF

The White Stream gas transportation project. - a project to deliver Caspian gas to the EU. Giorgi Vashakmadze. Director – Corporate Development

http://www.emportal.rs/data/File/Ekonfe ... Stream.PDF

White Stream can De-Monopolize the Turkish Transit of Gas to Europe

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 199
October 29, 2009 04:01 PM Age: 9 days
Azerbaijan , Energy
By: Vladimir Socor

Political risks to Caspian gas transportation have emerged westward of the Caucasus in Turkey, where such risks were least expected. Azerbaijan has become the first gas-exporting country to experience those risks, stemming from Turkey’s position as a transit monopolist. Turkey’s AKP government is practically blocking the transit of Azerbaijani gas to Europe and slowing down the Shah Deniz and Nabucco projects’ implementation.

Consequently, Baku is now seeking alternative export solutions for its gas. Possible solutions include Russia and Iran overland, as well as the proposed White Stream pipeline across the Black Sea to Europe (EDM, October 21, 22).

White Stream, a private venture, had never deliberately been intended to bypass Turkey. However, it can now be seriously considered for carrying Azerbaijani gas directly to Europe, without recourse to the Turkish route. Activating the White Stream pipeline project at the European Union’s level would demonstrate that Turkey cannot and must not behave as a transit monopolist on Caspian gas to Europe. The proposed White Stream is integrated, along with Nabucco, since November 2008 in the E.U.’s strategy for a Southern Corridor for natural gas to Europe.

Addressing the Azerbaijani government’s recent special session on gas issues, President Ilham Aliyev mentioned the possible export of Azerbaijani gas across the Black Sea. He referred both to White Stream and to liquefied natural gas (LNG) as possible solutions, currently under consideration (www.day.az, October 17).

White Stream is being promoted by a consortium of several small companies in London, currently including the White Stream Pipeline and the Pipeline Systems Engineering companies. It is the first fully private gas pipeline project in any of the former Soviet-ruled countries. The goal is to export Caspian gas via Georgia, the Black Sea, and Romania to markets in E.U. territory (Reuters, October 19).

The White Stream line is projected to branch off from the international South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP; also known as Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, BTE), which presently carries Azerbaijani gas via Georgia to Turkey. The SCP (BTE) pipeline is expected to also carry Central Asian gas, via Azerbaijan and Georgia, into the Nabucco pipeline on Turkish territory. White Stream would, however, branch off in western Georgia with a 100-kilometer pipeline to Supsa on the Black Sea coast. The line would then run on the seabed for some 1,100 kilometers to a landfall point near the Romanian port of Constanta. Using Romania’s gas transmission system, White Stream gas can reach E.U. countries farther afield or be marketed through swap operations.

The plan envisages laying four parallel strings on the seabed from Georgia to Romania, each with a throughput capacity of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, for a total annual capacity of 32 bcm ultimately. Each string would involve a distinct stage in the White Stream project’s development, correlated with the availability of growing volumes of Caspian gas for export to Europe via Azerbaijan and Georgia. The steel tubes, at 26-inch diameter each, are to be laid in ultra-deep water, the maximum water depth exceeding 2,000 meters below the surface in the central part of the sea. The development company proposes to use the J-Lay barge method for laying the pipes on the seabed. Some of the company’s personnel had previously been involved with Italy’s ENI, which designed and laid Gazprom’s Blue Stream One pipeline, from Russia to Turkey, on the seabed of the Black Sea.

According to White Stream’s general manager Roberto Pirani, the project company hopes to sign a project agreement in 2010, complete the design work by 2011, obtain an investment decision by 2012, start construction work by 2013, and see the first gas flow through the first of four strings by 2016 (Zerkalo [Baku], October 20).

An earlier version of White Stream would have laid the seabed section from Georgia to Ukraine’s Crimea, where White Stream was to connect with the Ukrainian transit network. That version was proposed almost simultaneously, though separately, in 2005 by Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the White Stream company. In that case, the undersea route would have been shorter, the waters shallower, the costs correspondingly lower, and White Stream gas could have been pumped to Europe using the spare capacities available in Ukraine’s gas transit pipelines. However, the risks of Russian interference with the project in the Black Sea seemed high; a subsequent transfer of Ukrainian transit pipelines into Gazprom’s control could not be discounted; and, following the January 2009 Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict, the idea of increasing the volume of gas transit through Ukraine seemed unappealing. The White Stream company apparently has chosen E.U. member country Romania as the partner in this project.

Azerbaijan, Romania, and Georgia are also considering LNG as a possible solution for the export of Azerbaijani gas via the Black Sea (www.day.az, October 17). This would involve liquefaction in a Georgian port and re-gasification in Romania’s Constanta port. The costs of this method as well as those of White Stream have yet to be calculated and compared.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cac ... 8fb3190a42

The GUEU Pipeline gas project

good charts and maps on projected pipelines

http://www.doingbusiness.ro/energy2007/ ... Pirani.pdf