I haven't been keeping fully up to date on this part of the world -- but last I looked, China was making some very strong moves into Central Asia. Here are a couple of things from early in 2006 that may be still be relevant:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0103.htmlOn December 15, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) inaugurated an oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to northwest China. That pipeline will undercut the geopolitical significance of the Washington-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline which opened this past summer amid big fanfare and support from Washington. The geopolitical chess game for the control of the energy flows of Central Asia and overall of Eurasia from the Atlantic to the China Sea is sharply evident in the latest developments.
Making the Kazakh-China oil pipeline link even more politically interesting, from the standpoint of an emerging Eurasian move towards some form of greater energy independence from Washington, is the fact that China is reportedly considering asking Russian companies to help it fill the pipeline with oil, until Kazakh supply is sufficient. Initially, half the oil pumped through the new 200,000 barrel-a-day pipeline will come from Russia because of insufficient output from nearby Kazakh fields, Kazakhstan's Vice Energy Minister, Musabek Isayev, said November 30 in Beijing.
That means closer China-Kazakh-Russia energy cooperation--the nightmare scenario of Washington.
Simply put, the United States stands to lose major leverage over the entire strategic Eurasian region with the latest developments. The Kazakh developments also have more than a little to do with the fact that the Washington war drums are beating loudly against Iran.
http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=2187Pipelines play a role elsewhere in Kremlin strategy. Russia has joined with China in creating the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, which also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (all former Soviet provinces). Though the SCO was created to fight Islamic terrorism in Central Asia, its other prime objective is to keep American influence out of this energy-rich region. In August, 2005, Russia and China held joint military exercises on China’s Yellow Sea coast, which faces the Korean peninsula and Japan, under the auspices of the SOC. The exercises involved troops and naval forces from both countries and strategic bombers from Russia. The operations that had little to do with counter-terrorism, but were widely believed to be directed at countering the U.S.-Japanese alliance.
On December 15, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. inaugurated an oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to northwest China. The pipeline will undercut the geopolitical significance of the Washington-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which opened last summer. Half the oil being carried to China will come from Russia, until Kazakhstan’s output is expanded. Estimates are that Kazakhstan has 35 billion barrels of discovered oil reserves, twice the amount in the North Sea, and may have double that amount in additional, undiscovered reserves. In October, Beijing completed a $4.18 billion takeover of PetroKazakhstan Inc., beating out ExxonMobil in a deal shaped as much by geopolitical considerations as by money.
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