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American officials frown when outsiders call the battle over the Caspian another "Great Game," the term Rudyard Kipling used for the 19th century struggle for influence and control between the British and Russian empires. But another Great Game is what it is. Washington wants Caspian oil to flow through many pipelines so that no single country can bottle it up, and is adamantly against having a new pipeline pass through Iran. It is fine if some of the lines run through Russia, as they already do, but Russia should not be able to turn a valve and shut off all or most of the Caspian flow.
Specifically, the U.S. wants the big new carrier, the one the oilmen call the main export pipeline, to run westward from the Caspian to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, on the Mediterranean, because Turkey is a NATO ally. The U.S. does not entirely trust Russia, which resents the arrival of foreign influence in what were Soviet republics. To Washington, the Islamist regime in Iran looks even less friendly. "The last thing we need," says a White House aide, "is to rely on the Persian Gulf as the main access for more oil."
Officials in Tehran point out that a pipeline southward through Iran would be the shortest way to go. "This is all ridiculous," says Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, an adviser to the ministers of petroleum and foreign affairs in Tehran, as he draws a map of proposed routes through Russia and Turkey. "We have our hands in the Caspian Sea and our feet in the Persian Gulf, the simplest outlet for this energy."
The Iranians don't rely just on logic to press their case. They cite treaties with the Soviet Union dating back to 1921 and 1940 that declare the sea a common lake between the two countries. Tehran is willing to negotiate a new agreement but demands veto rights over any aspect it doesn't like. If Iran's interests are not taken into account, says Ardebili, it will deal with what it considers illegal activities in the Caspian by using "constructive--and possibly destructive" countermeasures.
By last fall the U.S. was pressing hard for the option it favors, a system of oil-and- gas lines starting through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, running under the Caspian Sea to Baku, then through Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean. This elaborate scheme is not an easy sell. The long pipeline would cost about $4 billion to build and add up to $4 to the cost of each barrel of oil it carried. To many company executives, it seems easier to use the southern route through Iran or the northern route through Russia to the Black Sea.
"If I had my way," says a senior Western oil executive, "we'd sign with the Iranians. In this part of the world, they are by far the most trustworthy partners for a pipeline deal. Terrorism? Who's going to blow up their own pipeline?" But the U.S. option, the east-west line, gathered support from some regional leaders--Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, for example--who thought it would be more secure.