CORRUPT OIL PRACTICES IMPLICATE PRESIDENT NAZARBAYEV
By Dr. Louise Shelley (7/19/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: According to the information released, the Justice Department has asked the Swiss authorities to provide information on suspicious bank accounts in their country that are thought to contain payments from western oil companies for Kazakh oil, diverted to the private accounts of Nazarbayev and two close associates. Allegedly $60 million dollars passed in the mid to late 1990s to accounts in Switzerland controlled by Nazarbayev, former Kazakh Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin and Nurlan Balgimbayev, the former prime minister and now head of Kazakhstan’s state oil company.
Exxon Mobil corporation, the largest publicly traded oil company, is cooperating in the investigation but their other partners in Offshore Kazakhstan International Oil Co.
BAKU CASPIAN MEETING CREATED HOPES BUT NOT CONCRETE RESULTS
By Hooman Peimani (3/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Since the Soviet Union\'s fall, the inability of the five littoral states (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan) to agree on a legal regime for the Caspian Sea has created uncertainty about the ownership of many Caspian offshore oilfields and prevented their development, while creating a situation ripe for tension and hostility among the littoral states. This reality has created a major obstacle to their acceptance of a legal regime. Until 1999 Iran and Russia opposed dividing the Caspian Sea into national zones, in favor of dividing it based on the condominium principle.RUSSIA BEGINS OIL SWAPS WITH IRAN
By Robert M. Cutler (3/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Iran has been seeking since the mid-1990s to undertake oil swaps with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as a way to increase its own exports. Such swaps involve Iran’s importing oil in the north on its Caspian Sea coast for domestic refining and consumption, while exporting compensatory quantities to the world market from its southern ports on the Persian Gulf. This has been part and parcel of Iran’s strategy not only for developing its own energy sector but also for situating itself as an important transit country for international trade flows in general.HARDENING OF BORDERS CALLS FOR GREATER CENTRAL ASIAN COOPERATION
By Dr. Gregory Gleason (8/2/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: One of the most widely discussed issues of the late perestroika period was the importance of maintaining a "common economic space" on the territory of the Soviet Union. Rival versions of plans for Soviet devolution included measures to maintain commerce and other forms of interaction among the countries. In the end, the Soviet Union did not devolve, it fragmented.
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Staff Publications
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, Greater Central Asia as A Component of U.S. Global Strategy, October 2024.
Analysis Laura Linderman, "Rising Stakes in Tbilisi as Elections Approach," Civil Georgia, September 7, 2024.
Analysis Mamuka Tsereteli, "U.S. Black Sea Strategy: The Georgian Connection", CEPA, February 9, 2024.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, ed., Türkiye's Return to Central Asia and the Caucasus, July 2024.
Book Svante E. Cornell, ed., "The Changing Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus" AFPC Press/Armin LEar, 2023.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, Stepping up to the “Agency Challenge”: Central Asian Diplomacy in a Time of Troubles, July 2023.
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy in Central Asia through Central Asian Eyes, May 2023.