MOSCOW — The five countries with shorelines on the Caspian Sea agreed Sunday to a formula for dividing the world’s largest inland body of water and its potentially vast oil and gas resources.
The leaders of Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which the Kremlin said “reflected a balance of interests.’’
Landlocked and less salty than the ocean, the Caspian Sea was regarded by Iran and the Soviet Union — until the Soviet collapse — as a lake, with a border neatly dividing the two countries’ territories.
But when new seaside nations emerged, they sought either their own zones of Caspian territory or a new approach to governing the sea that would classify it as international water with territorial zones and neutral areas, though it has no outlet to the world’s oceans.
The pact signed at a summit in Kazakhstan on Sunday takes both approaches in a compromise treating the surface as international water and dividing the seabed into territorial zones.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, told reporters, however, that dividing the seabed and its mineral wealth would require additional agreements.
Russia, the sea’s main naval power, had opposed splitting the Caspian into national territories that would have confined its own navy to a northwestern corner.
The country has launched missiles from its Caspian Sea fleet to strike targets in Syria, flies over the sea to reach Syria, and analysts say, never had the intention of surrendering its military dominance.
The agreement says no country without Caspian shoreline can deploy military vessels in the sea.
In addition, Russia has for much of the post-Soviet period objected to east-west energy trade through subsea pipelines, hoping to keep in place the north-south trade routes of the Soviet Union’s rail and pipeline system.
Oil companies in the 1990s first proposed trans-Caspian pipelines to bring landlocked Central Asia’s energy to market, but that dropped off their agenda as the sea’s legal status was bogged down in talks for decades.
Sunday’s agreement potentially opens the sea for underwater oil and natural gas pipelines, which Russia had opposed, ostensibly on environmental grounds, though it has built such pipes in the Black and Baltic seas.
Only nations whose seabed territories are crossed by the pipelines would have to agree to lay the new pipelines, the convention says, though all five states could have a say on environmental protections.
A proposed trans-Caspian oil pipeline could ease exports from the Kashagan oil field in Kazakhstan, which is managed by Exxon.
New York Times
