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The need for a long- term EU common energy policy is becoming all the more urgent, as there is an increasing trend in Europe`s oil and gas dependence. Energy consumption in the European continent is due to increase in the coming years and it is acknowledged that EU oil and gas reserves will not be sufficient to cover the energy demand. The current oil dependence of the EU amounts to 76% and gas dependence is equal to 40%. These numbers are projected to increase in a 20-30 years time to 90% for oil and 70% for gas, whereas eastern enlargement is likely to exacerbate the afore mentioned trends. Furthermore, up to 40% of gas imported to the EU comes and will come in the future from Russia. The EU candidate States have an oil dependence of 90-94% and gas dependence of 60-90%. All these calculations point to the need for cure of all the structural weaknesses of the energy markets within the EU, by: a) making full exploitation of the discovered European energy fields, b) harmonizing the regulatory competition frameworks of the 15 and c) creating an internal EU energy market. With respect to the EU energy reserves, the considerable North Sea oil field amounts to 4,4% of world production, however its oil reservoir is bound to be exhausted within 25 years. Norway has proven reserves of 11bn barrels of oil due to last 23 years and 1,77 mn cm of gas due to last 10 years. Moreover, there exists a significant energy potential in the Barents Sea yet to be exploited. As a consequence, the European energy reservoirs are likely to cover part of Europe`s energy demand for the short- term of the next 20-25 years only. On the contrary, the production scenarios for Russia and the wider Caspian and Central Asia (C, C.A.) region are mostly encouraging. The Russian government plans to increase production of both gas (from 590bn cm/y to 660bn cm/y) and oil from (from 305bn t/y to 320bn t/y) over the next five years. Russia has the largest gas reserves worldwide. With a view to the increasing energy demands of Europe, the Russian government and Gazprom decided to open a giant new field for exploration in the Yamal- Nenetsk Autonomous Region, the Zapolyarnoe field, whose reserves are estimated at 3,3 tcm. At maximum, the field will provide about 100bn cm of natural gas per year. However, the Russian weak point is oil, since Russia is the second oil consumer. Oil production dropped between 1989- 1991 but from the mid 90s it is again on track. Regarding the C, C.A. region, Kazakhstan dominates in oil production with 45mn t in 2000 and a constant increasing trend of 70mn t in 2005, 100mn t in 2010 and reaching the highest oil production forecast of 160mn t in 2020. This accelerating forecast is due on the one hand to the ongoing drilling and extraction processes in the vast Tenguiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan fields. The respective oil consumption forecasts for Kazakhstan amount to 84% by 2020, which shows that there exists a considerable gap between oil production and consumption in Kazakhstan, making this country one of the biggest potential oil suppliers of the EU. Already, the first oil from Tenguiz is moving to Novorossisk through the CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium) pipeline and from the Russian port to the Bosphorus Straits and the EU markets. Azerbaijan is following with 120mn t of oil production and its respective consumption forecast only to 25,9mn t for the year 2020! However, the extraction process is moving quite slowly in Azerbaijan, due mainly to the geological and technical difficulties the oil companies are facing. In the year 2001, Chevron and Agip operating in the Absheron and Kurdashi fields respectively showed great reluctance to honor their commitments undertaken in the Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) and to continue drilling, as the test drills failed to find commercially viable reserves. Turkmenistan on the other side of the Caspian has an amazing gas production and consumption forecast for the year 2020 of 129,8bn cm and 18,7bn cm respectively! Turkmen resources in the Caspian are estimated at 11 bn tn of oil and 5,5 tcm of gas. Turkmenistan rates as the fourth world gas producer, however transportation encounters serious difficulties due to the distant geographic location and the severe dangers of possible under- Caspian pipelines. Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov announced in late October 2001 that Turkmenistan will sign PSAs for 47 oil and gas blocks with foreign companies by the beginning of the year 2002. The Middle East (OPEC) represents 45% of the EU current oil imports with OPEC average production cost at 2$ bpd, whereas the non- OPEC average production cost rates at 5$bpd. The launch of the EU- Russia strategic energy partnership in November 30, 2000 in Paris along with the vast energy potential of the C, CA have refocused the attention on the need for the EU to diversify its energy supply resources by decreasing its dependence on OPEC, in order to secure energy supply for the long- term perspective. The C, CA reserves can become an alternative- not a substitute- to the Middle East reservoir, however they should not be exaggerated. Overall, there are around 200bn bpd of oil and 10-18 tcm of gas. By 2010 the available oil for export will be around 2,5mn bpd, as specialists estimate that the extraction process is going very slowly, especially in Azerbaijan, where a significant lack of infrastructure and know-how of the people are witnessed. The EU goals of a) securing energy supply and b) diversifying of supply resources in order to minimize external risk factors and dependence of one source, as they are enshrined in the 2000 Green Paper of the European Commission on energy security, could not have been stated in a more realistic way. The question is how, in what way these goals will be better and faster served, so that the EU can acquire a long-term energy strategy and secure the future energy supply for its current and prospective Member-States. It is becoming all the more clear- especially after the September 11 events- that there is an urgent need for the EU to get more actively and intensively involved in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Caspian Basin, if it wishes to acquire a more substantive role, both in the economic and the political levels, in the energy and security developments in the wider European order. There exist a big number of bilateral programs and actions of economic nature of the EU under the heading "External Actions" of the EU budget for each country of the C, CA region separately, however the EU has not so far adopted a single multilateral program of economic assistance for the whole area. The TACIS program provides for technical and financial assistance along with transfer of know- how for Russia, the CIS and the NIS having a distinct budget for each country scheduled on a mid- term basis. The TACIS program is considered as the most useful financial tool for the implementation of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs) of the EU for most of the countries of the former Soviet Union. The PCAs have proved, all along these years after the demise of the Soviet Union, useful tools in the process of approximation of these countries to the EU standards, however they have not produced the desired results, due to a certain extent to the inefficient Brussels bureaucracy of the External Relations Directorate General of the European Commission as well as to the lack of coordination between the TACIS and the PCAs mechanisms, as it is frequently admitted by officials of the European Commission itself. In the case of Russia especially, the allocation of funds for institutional reform and democratization have proved of the utmost inefficiency, whereas the common strategy for Russia and Ukraine still remain on the paper, despite the prompt answer from the Russian side of the Mid- Term Strategy of the Russian Federation for its relations with the EU. Moving on to concrete sectors of the economy, the INOGATE program aims at assisting the CIS and the NIS in reforming their energy sector, through the support for investments from European companies in the region. The Umbrella Agreement may help towards this direction. In the transport area, TRACECA has been designed to create a Pan- European Transports System linking the EU Transport Corridors with the wider Eurasian space through the strategic Black Sea area by upgrading the existing road and railways as well as constructing new ones. Moreover, in the sensitive sphere of foreign policy, it is about time for the EU to make the best out of the mechanism of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), as the latter is foreseen in the Title 5 of the Amsterdam Treaty. Through the activation and upgrading of all the CFSP instruments (art. 11-15 TEU), the EU should get more actively involved in the conflict prevention and conflict resolution processes in the Caucasus and Central Asia, i.e. by adopting and implementing common positions and joint actions on the ground as well as by putting into use the common strategies for Russia and Ukraine. The issue of security and conflict resolution in the Caucasus in particular is of vital importance for the EU due to the fact that this area is the main transit route for the pipelines bringing oil and gas from the C and CA to the western markets. The strong correlation between political security and energy security acquires value added, as security and safe transit in the Caucasus reveals as a sine- qua- non for the transportation of the hydrocarbons to the energy dependent EU. It should not be neglected that many EU companies are operating in the region and fully participate with high percentages in the PSAs for the exploitation of huge oil and gas fields in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and now in Turkmenistan too. We should not forget either that the Italian oil company ENI recently became the single operator of the most promising Kashagan field in South- East Kazakhstan. The EU should be more active in preserving the interests of its companies and an efficient way to do that could be through the adoption of a common position (art. 12 TEU) for a single legal framework of participation of EU companies in the PSAs. The issue of the energy transit routes from C, CA to the EU (East-West and North-South) is primarily an economic one and therefore the European Commission should assess the various proposals for participation of European companies in the PSAs in the Caspian, as well as in the construction of the pipeline projects first on an economic/financial basis and subsequently taking into account the various security considerations, i.e. to examine the economic feasibility of each pipeline project. A second step would be the evaluation of all these projects and the selection of the most attracting and useful ones for the EU energy needs. So far, the EU has abstained from taking a firm stance, needless to say adopting a common position on the issue of the Caspian energy export routes, due to the sensitive political and geo strategic considerations and interests of the 15 Member-States. However, if the EU wants to acquire a unique external voice and support its vital energy and economic interests, it should go through the process of elaborating a common position (art. 12 TEU) on this issue as well. |
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| aus der Diskussion: | Transmeridian Exploration - Kürzel : TMXN |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | fortunata (27.08.03 16:20:07) |
| Beitrag: | 140 von 3,850 (ID:10571899) |
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