Pipelines run through Georgia carrying oil, which is then transported by sea from port cities like Poti. According to experts, the Georgian pipelines pose a threat to the Russian stranglehold over the region’s fuel market.

The year 2005 witnessed the completion of the principal pipeline meant for carrying oil through Georgia, and sparked off jubilation in the United States which saw it as a major success in its foreign policy in terms of securing an alternative source of fuel. The construction of the pipeline meant that oil produced in Central Asia could be made available to the West, thus weaning it away from its dependence on the Arab countries. It also meant that the Americans could now ignore Russia for its oil needs- a much-cherished objective for the United States.

Bureaucrats in the United States who were responsible for framing policies were optimistic that circumventing Russia in terms of oil supply would deter the latter from reestablishing dominance over Central Asia and its stupendous oil and gas reserves. It could also mean a better and also less risky way of getting oil without interference from Moscow which had always maintained a vice-like grip over export channels- a legacy of the Soviet era. The tussle with Moscow seemed to be the modern version of a 19th-century competition for one-upmanship in the area, called the Great Game.

During the 1990s the American diplomats distributed advertisement material in the Central Asian region, which spearheaded US attempts to gain allies there, which carried the following message: “Happiness is multiple pipelines.” This message also summarized American strategic plans for the region.

Oil pundits express the opinion that a state of war between Russia and Georgia could jeopardize US efforts to tap into Central Asian energy resources at a time when record Asian oil demands coupled with diminishing supply jacked up fuel prices to oppressive levels.

“It is hard to see through the fog of this war another pipeline through Georgia,” according to Cliff Kupchan, who worked in the State Department during the tenure of Bill Clinton and who advised Eurasia Group in the realm of political risk-taking. “Moving forward, multinationals and Central Asian and Caspian governments may think twice about building new lines through this corridor. It may even call into question the reliability of moving existing volumes through that corridor.”

Experts fear that renewed Russian enthusiasm in taking control over the region’s geopolitics could play a significant role in fashioning the energy landscape there.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, during the 1990s, concerted American attempts were engineered by Bill Clinton in order to secure control over crude in the Caspian Sea. The Georgian pipeline, otherwise called the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line (BTC for short) marks a watershed in the positives of American strategic thought for the region which has never relented in trying to estrange the countries of Central Asia from Russia. These countries had earlier been under the Soviet regime before getting divorced from it when the USSR broke up.

Certain observers believe that hostile posturing between Russia and Georgia is not just an extension of their traditional rivalry, but is more an offshoot of Russia’s misgivings that Georgia, which is pro-West ideologically, could turn out to be a long-term competitor in the business of fuel exports.

“Russians treasured the fact they had a monopoly on oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia, as it gave them considerable clout,” observed Marshall I. Goldman, an expert on Russia at Harvard and who recently authored “Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia.” “By agreeing to having an oil pipeline, Georgia made itself more vulnerable.”

A major concern is about what will happen to Kashagan oil, Kashagan being a major oilfield in the Caspian Sea which oversees reserve oil to the tune of over 10 billion barrels. Situated close to Kazakhstan, Kashagan has been the theater of energetic activities by Western corporates, in recent years, in their endeavors to tap new sources of Caspian oil.

The overall scenario appears grim in the region as Russia flexes its military might against a pro-Western and less armed Georgia which might translate to a choking off of oil flow for the hapless importers. Thus one cannot expect, at least in the short to medium term, and unhindered supply of affordable oil from Central Asia. An ominous and unpleasant geopolitical game of one-upmanship patronized by an unrelenting Russia, laced with the specter of unnecessary bloodshed, is set to dash all hopes of doing business in the region by an oil starved West. Against such a backdrop, it appears that there is hardly much that one can do except continue to buy more expensive Middle Eastern oil.