By Vestnik Kavkaza
The Russian President stated that energy is one of promising directions of cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at the Bishkek summit. Members of the SCO are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, partner-observers are Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan. Russian experts think energy is an important sphere for cooperation.
“From the point of view of consumption growth, India and China are a foundation of world energy consumption growth. Thus, there is a huge foundation for searching for really good and mutually-beneficial decisions,” the head of the State Duma Committee on Energy, Ivan Grachev, says. “Recently the Ministry of Energy of the U.S. announced a short-term prediction of oil prices. According to it, next year oil will cost $6 cheaper than this year. I think this is mostly impossible, as the world steps into economic growth. I think it was a political statement. It has no serious economic basis. However, it was done. If we look at long-term predictions, for instance, for the next 15 years, it will appear that disparity of oil and gas prices will be tenfold. For oil it will be from $50 to $500 per barrel. While we want to invest in big serious projects, our own projects. But under the forecast 50/500, serious investments shouldn’t be provided. The risk level will be absolutely unacceptable for investing trillions of dollars.
Comparing the circumstances, it would be reasonable to have our own system at the SCO platform. I mean not only the international energy club, but also the whole forecasting system. It can be done from the point of view of interests and intellect. The SCO can handle this.”
“The SCO is an important regional platform, but when we speak about certain things which touch on national interests, for example, energy, more questions occur,” the expert of the Institute of Oriental Sciences of the RAS, Stanislav Pritchin, thinks. “If we look at the members of the SCO, these are supplying countries and consuming countries. The main consumer is China, which doesn’t actually use the SCO platform for settlement of energy problems, but it works with all member-states of the SCO.
In early September China became a full shareholder in Kashagan, buying a share of CanocoPhilips. Partially, this is a very serious factor, because initially the mega-project was thought to be the resource base for the pipeline of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the main oil flows would go to the West. China’s participation in the project means that at least 1/10 of its oil will go to the East. The necessary infrastructure exists already – the Chinese have built a pipeline through the whole of Kazakhstan. Parallel to this, they are developing gas infrastructure.
We can see that China provides a very active policy in the region and is the main initiator, moderator and investor in what is happening. Somehow it is a competitor to Russia, as there is Russian infrastructure, but Russia is interested in the European market very much, so a certain outflow of energy resources from the Caspian region to the East meets the interests of Russia. So there is no direct clash of Russian and Chinese interests.”
