WRITTEN QUESTION E-0189/03

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(31 January 2003)

Subject: US initiatives for securing access to oil supplies in countries around the Caspian Sea

1. Is the Commission aware that there is growing interest in the petroleum reserves believed to be lying under the ground in states created on the territory of the former Soviet Union, where 20 % of the world's oil reserves and 50 % of the world's gas reserves are to be found?

2. Can the Commission confirm that the USA is increasingly involved in measures to enable it to secure a constant supply of petroleum and natural gas from reserves around the Caspian Sea?

3. Can the Commission confirm that the laying of a new 1 760 km long oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan via Tblisi in Georgia to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean near the Syrian border in Turkey is the most expensive and least cost-effective of all the alternatives previously considered?

4. Is the pipeline to Ceyhan, which is scheduled to be completed in 2005, mainly linked to US interests and participation, or are companies and the authorities in the EU also involved in this project?

5. What is the Commission's view of the conclusions of Dr Parvizi Amineh, researcher at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Amsterdam, who in his book Great Game, due to be published shortly, states that if these trends continue Europe and Asia will become completely dependent on oil and gas distributed by the US?

6. Do agreements exist with the EU and/or its Member States on the supply of this oil for use in Europe, or is the oil being wholly, or to a significant extent, reserved for US consumption, which is continuing to grow strongly?

Source: Netherlands daily newspaper De Volkskrant of 18 January 2003

Answer given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(14 March 2003)

The Commission is aware of the oil and gas potential of the States which emerged from the former Soviet Union, particularly in the Caspian Sea region. This interest was demonstrated, notably, with the development in 1995 of the special Inogate programme within the TACIS framework. In addition, the Commission is of course very sensitive to the key role which Russia now plays in supplying oil and gas to the Union. The Commission has built up and formalised an energy dialogue with Russia, which is the Community's leading external supplier of gas and the Union's second largest external supplier of oil.

Like the EU, the United States is seeking to promote geographical diversification of the international oil supply, a diversification in which the countries which emerged from the former Soviet Union have a role to play. The Commission believes the decision must remain with the companies concerned as to where to lay pipelines, on the basis of economic and commercial considerations.

The Commission is not familiar with the contents of the work Mr Parvizi Amineh is about to publish.

The Commission would point out that in its Green Paper on Security of Supply(1), adopted in 2000, it referred clearly to the problem of the Union's energy dependency and outlined proposals for dealing with that problem. In this context, the dialogue between producer countries and consumer countries, and especially the closest countries, is of great importance for the diversification of the Union's sources of supply.

(1) COM(2000) 769 final.