Tom Bower - The Squeeze - Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century

As proof of his influence, there was an outbreak of violence, murders and bomb blasts across Azerbaijan. President Clinton’s priority was to protect oil supplies, regardless of the background of those with whom he would have to deal to do so, and with American support Aliyev reasserted his authority. Clinton’s success encouraged the administration to further humiliate Russia. Seeking allies around the Caspian to separate the oil-rich countries from Russia and pipe their crude to the Mediterranean, Clinton and Gore encouraged Exxon, Chevron and other Western oil companies to act under the ‘shield of government’, blatantly antagonising Moscow. ‘Happiness is Multiple Pipelines’ read a bumper sticker handed out by American diplomats fizzing enthusiastically about ‘to the victor the spoils’.

To transport Azerbaijan’s oil, Clinton had been urging BP to build the BTC pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan, a blue-water port on the Mediterranean, bypassing Russia. In Clinton’s opinion, completing the pipeline would put the seal on Russia’s defeat and American ascendancy in the region. BP refused the president’s entreaties until its technicians had determined whether Azerbaijan’s fields would yield five billion barrels, making it financially justifiable. That would not be established until 2001. BP’s experts would discover that the reservoirs were better than anticipated: they expected not five but 9.5 billion barrels of oil to lie beneath the Azeri seas, a true elephant.

Clinton’s demands to build a pipeline for Kazakhstan’s oil would prove more difficult to fulfil. The ideal route to the Mediterranean, avoiding Russia, was through northern Iran. But American sanctions imposed in 1979 excluded that option. Classified as a rogue state, Iran, combined with Libya and Iraq, possessed 23 per cent of the world’s known oil reserves (923 billion barrels), but in 1996 contributed only about 6 per cent of global production (3.6 million barrels a day). The sanctions had proven to be counter-productive. Iran relied on oil for 90 per cent of its foreign earnings, yet was compelled to use 33 per cent of its production for domestic energy and to import electricity from Turkmenistan. In an attempt to relieve the nation’s poverty, the Iranian government was developing nuclear energy in order to release oil for exports, and was encouraging China to exchange nuclear and missile technology for oil. In 1997 Clinton was warned that China would increase its dependence on imported oil from 12 per cent in 1995–96 to 40 per cent by 2000, and would increasingly depend on Iran. That growth would inevitably impinge on America’s needs. Over half of America’s daily consumption of 18 million barrels of oil was imported, and about five million barrels came from the Gulf, which had 65 per cent of the world’s reserves. China’s increasing consumption of oil could be accommodated if Western oil companies were allowed to develop Iran’s natural gas fields in South Pars, an area bordering Qatar under 220 feet of water with an estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of gas and some oil. Initially, Clinton had agreed.

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