The US Oil Policy in Central Asia

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist bloc, a new set of security concerns emerged around the pipeline politics of Central Asia. In this new area of development, the aim has been to detach these resources, and the routes by which they reach international markets, from Russian monopoly control and to prevent any assertion of Iranian influence that would further increase the role of the Gulf as a conduit for the world’s oil. For these reasons the United States, from the second Clinton administration onwards, opposed a proposal to route Kazakhstan’s resources through the Russian port of Novorossiyk on the Black Sea as well as a project aimed at linking Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, the US has successfully persuaded Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan to support its preferred option of a Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline running from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey. This was so despite the involvement of US oil companies – Chevron and Unocal, respectively – in these proposals and despite the fact that the companies concerned reckoned these proposals to be better commercial prospects than the BTC option. Indeed, the BTC option fitted into a geopolitical strategy that the United States had been pursuing in the region since it recognized the Central Asian states in 1991. As a report written for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College by Elizabeth Wishnick has noted: ‘Expanding U.S. military engagement with Central Asian states has been viewed as a key mechanism to promote their integration into Western politico-military institutions, encourage civilian control over militaries, and institutionalize cooperative relations with the United States military, while dissuading other regional powers – especially Russia, China, and Iran – from seeking to dominate the region.’ While the United States has, of course, pressed for a leading role for US companies in these developments, it has not done so at their behest. Rather, it is more accurate to say that, because of their technological leadership across all stages of the industry and their ready access to sources of finance, US companies are key enablers of US policy in regions of the world oil industry that are technologically backward and capital-poor.

Simon Bromley


The United States and the Control of World Oil

Government and OppositionVolume 40 Issue 2 Page 225 - Spring 2005doi:10.1111/j.1477-7053.2005.00151.x
Volume 40 Issue 2