A delicate dance of power

China’s emergence as an important player in the development and use of energy resources found in the Caspian Sea basin, alongside longer established interests emanating from Russia, Europe and the United States, is a reminder of the ever-changing dynamics of the region, too easily overlooked during periods of apparent statis, such as during the late Soviet era.

Yet the appearance of this new power in the region also confirms the essential stability of a core group of relationships about which others wax and wane, with a periodicity of possible future importance that China’s presence can help us to identify.
Two bilateral energy relations, Kazakhstan-Russia and Turkmenistan-Russia, are of such import and duration that we can justifiably speak of the Kazakhstan-Russia-Turkmenistan triangle

as the foundation for the evolution of Central Eurasian energy geo-economics. That is the case, even though the third leg of that triangle, the relations between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, is only beginning to manifest itself through cooperation over the gas pipeline to China.

Development of hydrocarbon energy resources in Central Asia and the South Caucasus began independently of each other, although they share the same chronology. Yet despite the apparent disorder of everyday life in the region over the past decade and a half, “patterns”, if not a “logic”, that recur and recombine in different and ever newer ways are detectable.

Asia Times