Big Oil Comes Back To Baku

Given this tableau, the advent of the new oil boom, with its hundreds of projected offshore drilling rigs, sub-sea pipelines, and supertanker traffic, creates a potentially explosive ecological scenario, especially given the uniquely vulnerable nature of the Caspian Sea itself. As a river-fed brackish lake (88 percent of the water comes from the Volga, Europe's longest river; the Kur; and the Terek) with no outlet to the ocean, the Caspian has a limited ability to flush contaminants. A major accident here--given the hundreds of endemic species of fish and plants--could result in disastrous biodiversity loss. Added to that is the sea's sheer idiosyncrasy. As Einar Tresselt, Norwegian geologist and senior executive at the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), the leading consortium of foreign oil producers, says, "The Caspian is one odd duck, full of unsolved mystery." For instance, no one is quite sure why, having dropped almost thirty feet between the 1930s and the mid-1970s, the Caspian's water level has risen eight feet since then, resulting in widespread flooding and property loss. Also enigmatic are the "mud volcanoes" studding the southern seabed. These clay-belching calderas, some of which are several hundred feet high, are capable of quick, unpredictable growth--something to consider when laying extensive undersea pipelines and drilling what will be some of the deepest wells in the world. Beyond this are the environmental hazards involved with land pipelines. The existing Soviet-built conduits, especially those passing through Georgia, have been subject to incessant leakage, often in ecologically sensitive areas such as wetlands. These pipelines will be improved and upgraded, but accidents are difficult to prevent.

Recently, however, a ray of hope has arrived in the form of the UN-sponsored Caspian Environment Project (CEP), which promises what coordinator David Aubrey, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, calls realistic sustainability goals. The project includes the bold and wholly indispensable involvement of neighboring Iran as a full partner. Also "realistic" is CEP's stated desire to work closely with the AIOC and other private oil producers. "If we want to have success in protecting the Caspian region, we have to create a situation everyone can live with," Aubrey says. "We won't get anywhere attempting to ignore the economic imperatives."

The AIOC/CEP meld of Big Oil and Big Relief cannot but be a vast improvement on the Soviet "zero tolerance" policy of first setting up impossible-to-comply-with eco-rules and then collecting bribes when the dictates were broken. Still, as for the raising of ecological consciousness in Azerbaijan, Shahin Panahov, director of ECOKES, one of the country's few active environmental organizations, despairs. "We have a very long way to go when it comes to any environmental education," he remarks glumly, holding up a softcover textbook in which an airplane is shown dusting fields with DDT. The caption reads "For the natural goodness of our crops." Other pages detailing "our waters" show pictures of blue whales, not known to frequent Caspian sea lanes. The text is obviously from the Soviet era, but it is no relic. As Panahov points out, the book's reprint date is 1997, which is when it was distributed to Azeri fourth-graders.