By Vestnik Kavkaza
Death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made the question on friends and allies of Russia acute. Russian companies have actively worked at the Venezuelan market, especially in the sphere of energy. Chavez’s death can change the situation. Even though he left a huge capacity in cooperation with Iran, Russia, Belarus, and even Azerbaijan, but experts are afraid of growing influence of the USA on the Latin American world.
Commenting the theme of international energy cooperation of Russia for Vestnik Kavkaza, the head of the National Energy Security Fund Konstantin Simonov stated that a major problem is the relationship between Russia and other producers of oil and gas: “As for these countries, it is very difficult to build a smart strategy. In this respect we have a lot of problems with Azerbaijan and Iran. On the one hand, it seems that Azerbaijan is a partner of Russia, Russia is considering joint projects, but in reality we all understand that Azerbaijan is an obvious competitor to the Russian Federation, especially in the European energy market.”
According to Simonov, today the gas from the second phase of Shahdeniz is more or less the only real hope of the European Union for a new alternative gas: “I mean that Qatar ended its investment cycle. Turkmenistan is a huge issue. Iran is politically blocked. Iraq does not have free gas for export. Today, therefore, Shahdeniz is perhaps the most appropriate project, and that is why Europe is counting on Azerbaijan.”
“But Russia, of course, sees Azerbaijan in this regard as a competitor. It is known that Gazprom is trying to buy all the gas in order to keep it out of European markets. I personally do not think that Azerbaijani gas is a serious threat to Russia. There are about 16 billion cubic meters of gas, and at least six of them will move to Turkey, but still this is an unpleasant moment. Here, by and large, when we speak about Azerbaijan, we are talking about competition. We are competitors with Azerbaijan in the European market,” the expert states.
With regard to Iran, Simonov thinks that Russia also potentially enters into a serious debate about the European gas market: “Iran is the second largest holder of the world's proven natural gas reserves, and it is obvious that it is counting on access to the European markets. Here, Russia, by the way, is satisfied with the current situation, the status quo, when Iran is actually excluded from major projects. Incidentally, we could greatly benefit by oil, when the European Union imposed an embargo, we could have filled the niche of Iran in the European market, but we did not have free oil. Today I tried to explain to my colleagues that Russia should first of all think about the volume of production here, but not in Venezuela, for example. If we had the extra oil in 2011-2012, we could have supplied the oil to the European market and made money. But we did not have this free oil, and Saudi Arabia made money. But in general, competitive relations with Iran, of course, exist.”
“It seems that Russia has a high level of political cooperation with Azerbaijan and Iran, so many people think that we are partners in the energy sector, but we are competitors in this sector. Here we must also call a spade a spade, but competition does not mean that we should think about how to destroy each other. As for Azerbaijan, I believe the horror of its gas projects is artificial, and we may minimize these risks. And in this respect we do not need to buy all the gas and try to appease Azerbaijan with money. In Iran the situation is more complicated. It will all depend on the political situation there. But in general, we should understand that we are competitors, and we should proceed from this.”
