Varias de las
potencias que se oponen al plan imperial de dejarse destruir sin chistar han
comenzado a tejer alianzas en torno a un tema común: los combustibles fósiles.
Es así que países tan diversos como Rusia, China, Irán, Turquía y Qatar
comienzan a moverse en sincronía. Comenta el tema William Engdahl en su sitio
web http://www.williamengdahl.com:
Título: Russia’s
Interesting New Oil Geopolitics
Texto: Since the
1928 Red Line Agreement between British and French and American oil majors to
divide the oil riches of the post-World War I Middle East, petroleum or more
precisely, control of petroleum has constituted the thin-red-line of modern
geopolitics. During the Soviet time Russian oil exports were largely aimed at
maximizing dollar hard currency income in any possible market. Today, with the
ludicrous US and EU sanctions on Russia and the Washington-instigated wars in
the Middle East, Russia is evolving a strategic new frame for its oil
geopolitics. .
Much has been
said about how Russia under the Putin era has used its leading role as a
natural gas supplier as a vital part of its geopolitical diplomacy. Nord Stream
and soon Nord Stream II gas pipelines direct from Russia undersea, bypassing
the political NATO minefields of Ukraine and of Poland, have the positive
benefit of building an industry lobby in the EU. Especially in Germany, which
would think twice about the more lunatic Russo-phobic provocations of
Washington. Similarly Turkish Stream that gives South East Europe a secure
prospect of Russian natural gas for industry and heating independent of Ukraine
is positive both for the Balkans as for Russia. Now a new element is emerging
in the strategy of Russian state-owned oil majors to develop a new geopolitical
strategy using Russian oil and oil companies.
Matryoshka dolls,
Qatar and Rosneft
On December 7,
2016 Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian state had
sold a 19.5% share of Rosneft to a joint venture between Swiss commodity giant,
Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority for €10.2 billion. Russia retained
more than 60% control by the sale. There was great mystery as to the ultimate
details which were buried in what in Russian is called a matryoshka doll
structure, referring to the famous Russian painted dolls which when opened,
reveal a smaller doll and again, an even smaller doll and so on. It referred to
the1 nested structure of offshore shell companies used in the
Rosneft-Qatar/Glencore purchase.
Whatever the
details of that December sale, which brought the Russian treasury badly needed
funds amid a budget shortfall caused by the sharp decline in world oil prices,
some ten months later, Russia and Rosneft have now negotiated with Qatar,
Glencore and China’s CEFC China Energy Company Ltd., for CEFC to buy 14% of the
19.5% share of Rosneft.
Qatar clearly is
reacting to Saudi-driven economic sanctions and the resulting cash drain on its
economy by selling most of its share in Rosneft. The most significant aspect
however is that Rosneft for the first time makes a share holding with a Chinese
major oil company in the process. CEFC, a $34 billion annual income private
Shanghai company with its subsidiaries is engaged in oil and gas agreements
worth more than US$50 billion with companies in the Middle East and Central
Asia. The synergies of the Rosneft-CEFC deal for the elaboration of the mammoth
Eurasian Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) are obvious.
An analyst with
Wood Mackenzie, Christian Boermel, commented on the significance: “This deal
intensifies the energy relationship between Russia and China. A direct stake in
Rosneft will make CEFC China the main driver for the relationship of Rosneft
with China, ahead of CNPC, Sinopec and Beijing Gas.”
With this deal
Russian and Chinese state oil companies will cooperate on joint oil development
around the world, a major cementing of a bilateral relationship that has
emerged as a direct consequence of Washington stupidity in the past years,
first with the 2007 ballistic missile defense stations in Poland and across the
EU aimed at Russia, then the 2014 Ukraine coup d’etat by the CIA and US State
Department, obviously intended to drive a wedge between Russia and the EU, a
coup that has cost the EU economies an estimated $100 billion since 2014
according to a new UN report.
Like most
Pentagon and neocon projects, the Ukraine coup boomeranged and turned Russia in
a most significant way to an Eastern pivot towards cooperation with China and
all Eurasia. Now with Russia’s Rosneft–the world’s largest publicly traded oil
company–in a strategic partnership with China’s huge CEFC Energy, a significant
new element is added to Russia’s potentials of energy geopolitics, as well
those of China.
Russia with
Turkey in Iran
In another highly
significant geopolitical move, the Russian state oil company JSC Zarubezhneft
announced in August that it has entered a triangular oil development agreement
with the Turkish energy group, Unit International Ltd. and the Iranian Ghadir
Investment Company in well drilling projects in Iran worth a reported $7
billion. The three companies will finance and develop energy projects,
including development of Iran’s vast undeveloped oil resources.
Unit
International earlier this year signed an agreement together with a South
Korean engineering company to build five gas-fired power plants in Iran worth
$4.2 billion having a generation capacity of 5,000 megawatts, making them
Iran’s largest privately developed power plants. Iran is also the second
largest gas supplier to Turkey after Russia. Clearly here at least the Sunni vs
Shi’ite antagonisms take a back seat to pragmatic strategic energy cooperation,
and that’s all to the good. Wars of religion never produce good as we see
today.
The Turkish joint
venture with the Russian state oil company in Iran comes at the same time
Turkey announced that it has finalized purchase of the advanced Russian S-400
Triumf anti-aircraft system, said to be the world’s most advanced, over howls
of protest from Washington.
Zarubezhneft is a
Russian state oil company specialized in drilling projects outside Russia. They
are currently active in Vietnam, Cuba, Republika Srpska, Jordan and elsewhere.
The geopolitical dimension of those projects, and now the joint Russia-Turkey
oil and gas development agreement in Iran, begins to suggest a geopolitical
strategy. Joint energy development is serving to weave vital economic ties
around Russia.
When all these
developments are viewed superimposed on a map of Eurasia, it becomes clear that
a new geopolitical relationship, what we might call an economic energy force
field is drawing Turkey closer to Russia and to Iran, as well as China.
For its part,
Qatar, a nominally Sunni country which earned the enmity of Prince and
soon-to-be King, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, did so less for Qatar’s
earlier support of the Muslim Brotherhood and more for its developing relations
with not only Moscow, but also with Shi’ite Iran and with China. Qatar had been
in secret negotiations with Iran for joint development of their shared Persian
Gulf natural gas field.
Previously Qatar,
along with the Saudis and even Turkey, financed the war against Bashar al Assad
for Assad’s refusal to go with a Qatar gas pipeline via Syria to Europe. Assad
instead joined with Iran and Iraq in an alternative Iran gas pipeline to Europe
and the six-year-long terrorist war against Assad was launched.
At some point
following Russia’s decision to aid Assad in late 2015, in a pragmatic turn that
infuriated the Pentagon and Prince Salman, Qatar made a new decision along the
lines “if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.” Qatar entered secret talks with Iran
over Syria and over a joint Qatar-Iran pipeline that would mutually develop the
world’s largest known natural gas field they both share in the Persian Gulf—the
South Pars/North Dome field, by far the world’s largest natural gas field
according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The battle to control Qatar
in a sense is the battle to dominate world natural gas markets, today almost as
economically significant as oil to the future world economy.
In response to
the Trump-Kushner inspired Saudi and UAE-led economic sanctions against Qatar
last June, Qatar has stepped up its relations with Iran, with Russia and with
China, while refusing the impossible Saudi-UAE demands. The Chinese state bank
in Doha has transacted the dollar equivalent of over $86 billion worth of
transactions in Chinese Yuan since the opening of the Doha branch of China’s
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2015, and has signed other
agreements with China that encourage further economic cooperation.
Then on August
23, Qatar announced it was restoring full diplomatic relations with Iran, not
exactly what Jared Kushner’s friends in Washington and in Tel Aviv wanted to
see. Since the Saudi-led sanctions to isolate and starve Qatar into submission,
Iran has provided Qatar with sea shipments of fresh food and allowed Qatar
planes to cross its airspace.
Moreover, Qatar
relations with Russia are developing. Qatar, Iran and Russia are the main
lobbyists for the creation of the so-called “Gas OPEC”, which Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates and the United States vigorously oppose.
Add to this
changing force field in the Gulf the fact that Erdogan’s Turkish government,
previously a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia, condemned the Saudi actions against
Qatar. Turkey sent food supplies to prevent embargo-related shortages in Qatar
after June and passed legislation through parliament to deploy Turkish troops
on Qatari soil.
A new geometry
Russia, China,
Turkey, Iran, Qatar. They are weaving deeper peaceful economic ties, walking
away in the case of Qatar and Turkey from their ill-conceived US-inspired war
against Syria’s Bashar al Assad, developing long-term energy cooperation and defense
ties. At the heart is Russia’s emerging new oil geopolitics.
The response to
this all from the sinking Titanic that used to be known as the United States of
America, of its military lobby and their Wall Street bankers who actually run
Washington policy via their web of think-tanks, is infantile: war,
destabilizations, color revolutions, sanctions as a form of economic war,
demonization, lies. That’s all rather stupid and ultimately boring.
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