-Caveat Lector-
> www.wsws.org
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Turkey
>
> Earthquake finds US energy secretary in Turkish capital
>
> What was Bill Richardson up to in Istanbul?
>
> By James Brookfield
> 21 August 1999
>
> Back to screen version
>
> Tuesday morning's earthquake near Izmit, Turkey roused US Energy
> Secretary Bill Richardson from his bed on the twelfth floor of an
> Istanbul hotel. He told reporters that the building rocked back
> and forth for 45 seconds, during which time he was terrified.
>
> The scare, however, did not prevent him from going about the
> business of Washington and the big multinational oil companies
> hours later. On Tuesday Richardson continued a set of “serious
> discussions” begun the day before on a proposed pipeline that
> would move oil from several Central Asian countries through
> Turkey for export to the West.
>
> Richardson held meetings in the capital of Istanbul—only 40 miles
> north of the quake's epicenter and hard-hit by power outages—with
> his Turkish counterpart, Cumhur Ersumer, regarding their joint
> efforts to ship oil from the Caspian Sea Basin through Georgia to
> a terminus in Ceyhan, Turkey on the Mediterranean.
>
> At stake in Richardson's diplomatic maneuvers are not only the
> 100-200 billion barrels of oil estimated to be located near the
> Caspian, but also the entirely military and strategic balance of
> forces in the Central Asian and Caucasus regions. Since the
> breakup of the Soviet Union, the US has aggressively sought to
> expand its authority in this area.
>
> Though rival proposed routes for Caspian oil export (south
> through Iran or north through Russia) are more economically
> attractive to the oil companies, Washington has been pushing for
> the Baku-Ceyhan route in order to block Russian and Iranian
> influence in the region and foster the dependency of the Central
> Asian states on US economic and military power. As Richardson
> told Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times last November, “We're
> trying to move these newly independent countries toward the West.
> We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and
> political interests rather than going another way. We've made a
> substantial political investment in the Caspian and its very
> important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come
> out right.”
>
> A sticking point in securing the Baku-Ceyhan route has been
> finding enough oil to fill the pipeline. Oilfields operated by
> the Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium (AIOC, owned jointly
> by the Azerbaijani state oil company and 10 oil firms from the
> US, Britain, Norway, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia) are
> presently producing 100,000 barrels per day, though output is
> expected to climb eight-fold in the coming several years. The
> increased rate, however, still falls short of the one million
> barrel per day capacity of the proposed pipeline.
>
> Richardson is urging other oil producers to link into the
> Baku-Ceyhan route. These are reported to include Chevron and
> Texaco, both of which operate fields in neighboring Kazakhstan.
> With the added oil from these fields, the proposed pipeline could
> be filled to capacity.
>
> Richardson secured the backing of Turkish President Suleyman
> Demirel for another big petroleum project during his visit.
> Demirel affirmed that Turkey would buy natural gas from
> Turkmenistan, an announcement that will boost the fortunes of
> Royal Dutch/Shell. The oil giant announced plans last month to
> construct a gas pipeline which will run from Turkmenistan to
> Azerbaijan, underneath the Caspian Sea, then follow the route of
> the Baku-Ceyhan oil line. Arranging political backing for the gas
> pipeline occupied Richardson during stops in Baku and Ashgabat,
> Turkmenistan later in the week.
>
> Richardson had only arrived in Istanbul on Monday, after a stop
> in Nigeria. There he had “ironed out,” with President Obasanjo,
> the last details in a proposed $400 million natural gas pipeline
> project to ship Nigerian gas to Benin, Togo and Ghana; a joint
> venture between Royal Dutch/Shell and the state gas company.
>
> Richardson's trip received little attention from the press. Only
> the coincidence of a natural disaster prompted the few reports
> that did appear. No reporter or commentator pointed to the
> obvious contradiction between the unending claims of the Clinton
> administration that standing up for “human rights” is its guiding
> principal in foreign policy and its relations with the Turkish,
> Azerbaijani and Nigerian governments. Even as the collapse of
> substandard housing demonstrated the criminal venality of the
> Turkish ruling elite in the eyes of the masses of people,
> Washington offered nothing but statements of support and praise
> for its “strategic ally,” Turkey. Nor was Richardson's visit
> adversely affected by the death sentence the government has
> handed down to Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish Workers
> Party (PKK).
>
> No question was raised about US relations with the
> military-backed regime of Obasanjo, the former military ruler who
> came to power in a February 1999 election widely regarded as
> fraudulent. Nor was attention drawn to corruption and inequality
> in Azerbaijan, another US ally, described as follows by a
> reporter for the New York Times in an October 1998 survey:
>
> “Baku is a city of the artfully delivered bribe and the brute
> shakedown, of florid corruption and baroque greed.... Of course,
> the oil money is still just a trickle, and the people of
> Azerbaijan, two-thirds of whom live in poverty, are said to be
> unmoved by the Government's promises to lift living standards.
> Out in the countryside, far from the oil fields, almost a million
> refugees from the disastrous war with Armenia scratch by in
> abandoned rail cars and corrugated tin huts. But a paper thin
> layer of Baku society is housing itself in limestone palaces
> built high above the sea.”
>
> Tuesday's earthquake found another US official in Turkey. Joint
> Chiefs of Staff Chairman Henry Shelton, the highest ranking
> officer in the US military, was visiting the US air base at
> Incirlik at the time. The base continues to be used for US
> attacks against Iraq. More than 1,100 missiles have been fired at
> the country since four days of heavy US bombardment last
> December. A US State Department assistant secretary, Marc
> Grossman, told reporters on Tuesday that the earthquake would
> have no impact on US flights over (and, presumably, attacks on)
> the so-called “no-fly zone” in the north of Iraq.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
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