With the collapse of the USSR, a number of hotbeds of tension appeared on its territory. One of them is the Caspian Sea. As you know, earlier it was almost entirely located within the borders of the Soviet Union, and only its southern part belonged to Iran. Since 1991, five states - Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan-have become the" owners " of the Caspian Sea. The mutually exclusive interests of these five countries, several subjects of the Russian Federation (Astrakhan Region, Dagestan, Kalmykia) and the leading world powers - the United States, China, as well as Great Britain, Turkey, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan-collided. What are these interests? Why is it difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to coordinate them? How to build interstate relations in the future? To answer these and other questions, you should analyze the current situation.

For several centuries - until the Suez Canal was commissioned 130 years ago - Russia was the main crossroads connecting Europe and Asia. Its roads and rivers were the shortest routes from the Baltic Sea and the White Sea to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea region. Water transport arteries were placed under special state control due to their special importance. Back in 1798, Emperor Paul I signed a decree in which he ordered: At the same time, the State Order of Internal Waterways of Russia was established, which was transformed into a department at the beginning of the XIX century. The Suez and Panama Canals have fundamentally changed the geography of international trade, which is favorable for us, and they have reoriented the routes of transit trade routes. Time has decreed that Russia's access to the world's oceans in the south and west today largely depends on transit waterways located in neighboring countries. It is no secret that measures to restrict traffic on international arteries are being taken not only for environmental, but also for strategic purposes - in order, for example, to force states that depend on transit routes to make political or economic concessions. Among the dependent countries in this way is Russia.

Now we have a real chance to regain the status of the main "water power" connecting many countries of Europe and Asia. Russia now has a real possibility of direct water access to the southern seas. The Eurasian shipping channel Caspian - Persian Gulf has been designed. With Russian help, the channel is planned to be built in Iran by 2015. On this route, the transit route to the Caspian Sea and in the opposite direction passes through our water routes-the Volga, Volgobalt, White Sea-Baltic and Volga-Don channels.

Actually, you need to dig 500-550 kilometers between the rivers Kyzyluzen, Kerkhe and Karun (the first flows into the Caspian Sea, the second-into the Persian Gulf). We are going to work on deepening the bottom of these rivers. It is also necessary to reconstruct a number of ports. The total length of the route will be about 1400 km. The cost of construction, according to Iranian estimates, is from five to six and a half billion dollars.

The global project runs counter to the interests of many leading countries, but it fully meets the interests of Russia. Russia's new entry into the World's oceans is conceived - and not only speculatively, but also supported by technical and economic calculations - and affects the current geopolitical map of the world.

The implementation of such a project will allow increasing the volume of international cargo transit along the Persian Gulf - Caspian - Volgobalt - Baltic - North line by almost half by 2010 compared to the current one. According to experts, our country's transit revenues may amount to at least $ 3 billion annually. The main stumbling block is the unsettled status of the Caspian Sea. And it's not just that under the perpetual agreements of February 26, 1921 and March 25, 1940, any "national" decisions on the use of the Caspian water area and the rivers flowing into it must be agreed between all the states of the region.

In accordance with these agreements, the Caspian Sea does not provide for any sectoral or other spatial delineation, including its bottom. Freedom of navigation for coastal States and freedom of fishing are established throughout the entire length of the sea, with the exception of the 110-mile coastal zone, where only vessels of the adjacent State are engaged in fishing. The entire length of the Caspian Sea is open to coastal countries for other economic activities. And in 1962, the USSR and Iran also reached an agreement to ban commercial fishing of sturgeon in the sea and catch them only according to quotas in rivers when migrating to spawn. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, as CIS member States, confirmed their succession to this status in the Alma Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991.

In 1992, Iran offered all the Caspian littoral states to conclude a regional cooperation agreement, establish a regional international organization, and establish committees in various areas of cooperation within the framework of this status:

fisheries, bioresources, ecology, and mineral resources. Work has begun to coordinate approaches. And when everything was ready by 1994, things reached a dead end. The development of relations between the Caspian littoral states has taken a different path.

Azerbaijan has claimed the rights to the national sector of the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan supported the division of the sea floor into national sectors. He revised the regime of his protected area and, with reference to the perfection of modern offshore oil production technology, allowed oil exploration and development in it. A new controversy began about the method of ownership and possible division of the sea between all five states.

On November 12, 1996, at a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Caspian littoral countries in Ashgabat, a communique was adopted stating the need to develop a new legal status for the Caspian Sea. A corresponding negotiating mechanism has been established - a working group at the level of deputy foreign ministers. The mechanism works, but there is no new status yet. Thus, according to international law, the Caspian Sea continues to live under the treaties of Russia and Iran of 1921 and 1940, i.e. in the regime of free navigation and general use of the sea resources by coastal states, except for the 10-mile zone. In reality, in fact, there is a sectoral division of the sea.

In search of a way out of the current situation on the Caspian Sea issue, it was decided to hold parliamentary hearings. The first parliamentary hearings were held in 1995. They were a kind of reaction to the so-called contract of the century, signed on September 20, 1994 by several multinational oil companies in Azerbaijan, which effectively consolidated the Azerbaijani sector of the sea. The Russian oil company Lukoil is also part of the project. Following the results of the parliamentary hearings, it was decided to consistently and actively pursue a line to prevent the division of the Caspian Sea and protect Russian national interests here.

The second parliamentary hearings on the fate of the Caspian Sea were held on February 2, 1999. It was proposed to find a consensus, mutually agreed solution on the condition of a fair division of the hydrocarbon (gas and oil) resources of the Caspian Sea and the preservation of the common use of the water area, including ensuring freedom of navigation, rationing fishing and environmental protection. Kazakhstan agrees with this position of Russia. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are in favor of a complete division of the Caspian Sea into national sectors. Iran supports equal-salt division of the sea. This is the essence of different positions on other issues related to the Caspian Sea.

The reserves of hydrocarbon raw materials (oil and gas) under the bottom of the Caspian Sea are approximately 12-14 billion tons of conventional fuel. This is about 3% of the world's proven reserves. But they are mostly concentrated off the coasts of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The deep-sea bottom of the South Caspian Sea near Iran is considered unpromising in this regard. And the bottom south of the Volga Delta, near the Russian coast, is the least studied, since there is a protected zone for sturgeon reproduction in the Northern Caspian Sea up to the 44th parallel, and any geological exploration using drilling and seismics was prohibited here.

Oil processing in the Caspian Sea is associated with obtaining super-profits, a powerful impetus for the development of the national economies of the Caspian countries. They did not waste time on agreeing on a new status, reaching a full agreement, and began active work on the development of the riches of the sea. Azerbaijan has declared the adjacent section of the sea a fully national sector - both the bottom and the water space, and has enshrined this in its Constitution, while stating that it will not accept any other status of the Caspian Sea. The Azerbaijani government has created a favorable base for attracting investments, primarily American ones,for oil and gas exploration. In addition to Azerbaijani companies, American companies Amoko, Exop, Unocal, Japanese company Itogu Oil Exploration, Turkish company Terkish Petroleum and Russian company Lukoil participate in the Contract of the Century .

10 leading foreign companies have become partners of the Kazakhstan State Oil Company in the development of the Caspian Sea shelf.

A promising field has been identified at two blocks located on the border of the Russian and Kazakh sectors. Lukoil immediately announced its intention to represent Russia's interests in the project for this facility. Mainly only gas and condensate fields with oil rims are expected to be discovered off the coast of Turkmenistan. A joint agreement was reached between Shell, IOC (Iran) and the Turkmen government on oil and gas production near the Iranian border. Russian oil companies are exploring the possibility of being included in Turkmenistan's projects. Since the distribution of hydrocarbon reserves at the bottom of the sea is very uneven, with a favorable development of events, or rather, relations between coastal states, they will still go to some redistribution of reserves by dividing the bottom in order to achieve greater equality of chances for all the Caspian countries.

Another conflicting issue is the choice of the route (or routes) for transporting the "big Caspian oil" to world markets. Transit will bring considerable funds to the countries through which the pipeline will pass. There are several options.

"Russian" - from Baku via Dagestan and Chechnya (or bypassing it) to Novorossiysk, and then-by tanker through the Bosphorus.

"Georgian" - from Baku to Supsa on the Black Sea coast, then by tanker through the Bosphorus.

"Turkish" - from Baku to Georgia, and then - from the north to the south of Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

"Iranian" - from Baku to the Persian Gulf.

Kazakh oil can go partly to the east - to Xinjian, partly to Saratov and then through the network of Russian pipelines to Europe.

There are plans for other extensions of the" Russian "and" Georgian " routes. For example, to unload tankers in Burgas, pumping oil to Alexandropulis on the Aegean coast via the Bulgarian-Greek pipeline. However, it has yet to be built. Or to transfer oil via Ukrainian pipelines to Europe, unloading tankers in Odessa.

Each route has its own pros and cons. The "Russian" route is already functioning, pumping" early " Caspian oil. But its capacity cannot provide transportation of "big" oil. The limiter is the objective limits of the Bosphorus throughput and the subjective escalation of tension by Ankara around the movement of tankers through the Strait to strengthen the position of the Ceyhan pipeline project. In turn, the "Turkish" route will require huge initial costs. Today, the United States objects to the" Iranian " route for political reasons. There are a lot of other factors.

From an economic point of view, the" Russian " route is the most profitable. The pipes were laid long ago. In Soviet times, they were used to transport oil from Tyumen to Baku for processing. The technical task is only to make a reverse - to pump oil in the opposite direction. This has already been done in the Azerbaijani sector. At the same time, it has recently become known that China seriously intends to pump Kazakh oil to its terminals and build the Tengiz - Urumqi oil pipeline.

To all the twists and turns associated with the final choice of the pipeline route, the problem of building a large oil port between Novorossiysk and Anapa within the framework of the "project of the century" is added. There are quite serious objections to this project, both economic and geopolitical in nature. According to the project documentation developed by Fluor Daniel in Houston (USA), the Caspian Pipeline Consortium will receive 220 hectares of coastal territory for permanent indefinite use, and the oil terminal itself will have full autonomy in energy and water supply, without border and customs control of loaded tankers. You don't need to have a rich imagination to anticipate the consequences of implementing such a project. After all, as a rule, similar sea terminals operated with the participation of American companies are protected by American aircraft carriers to protect the economic interests of the United States.

In short, the problems of exploration, production and transportation of Caspian oil and gas are the main sources of tension in the region and serve as a cause and occasion for aggravation of relations between all states that have declared their interests in the Caspian Sea region.

The Caspian Sea is rich not only in oil and gas. The Caspian Sea is home to almost 90% of the world's sturgeon stock and gene pool. According to A. I. Nikolaev, a State Duma deputy and former director of the Federal Border Service, fish is now the second most profitable product after drugs. A kilogram of black caviar is estimated at 420 dollars, a ton-420 thousand dollars. The Caspian Sea produces thousands of tons of black caviar and valuable fish. However, the collapse of the USSR dealt a heavy blow to the Caspian sturgeon herd. For several years of rampant poaching at sea, the reserves of the most valuable fish have been sharply undermined. Over the past five years, sturgeon access to the Volga spawning grounds has decreased almost fourfold.

All this combined creates an acute, criminogenic situation on the shores of the Caspian Sea and all kinds of friction in international relations.

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