A corridor through thorns: EU energy security and the Southern Energy Corridor

Abstract

The Southern Energy Corridor (SEC), which aims to link Caspian Basin and potentially Middle East gas supplies to Europe, is one of the EU's six priority axes of energy infrastructures. Drawing on the external governance literature, the article provides an analysis of the EU's efforts in the wider Black Sea area to increase its energy security. It concludes that despite difficult domestic and geopolitical obstacles, the EU is pushing forward its objective to establish the SEC. However, the EU's institutionalised governance, with the incentives derived from close cooperation, has been a necessary condition of impact, but not sufficient. The SEC builds upon the east–west pipelines supported by the USA in order to prevent the Russian control over the Caspian Basin supplies. If the SEC is possible it is mainly because of the path-dependent processes created by those pipelines, which linked the international position of Azerbaijan and Georgia to their transit role between the Caspian Sea and Europe.

Keywords:

• EU external energy policy
• wider Black Sea area and Russia
• energy security

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Derek Averre for his comments on earlier drafts. The article was first presented at the PEEER Conference, ‘governing energy in Europe and Russia’, 3-4 September 2010, University of Warwick.

Notes

1. The EaP is the Eastern dimension of the ENP, whose participants are Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and the Southern Caucasus countries, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

2. The corridor primarily aims to link the Caspian Basin and, potentially, Iranian and Iraqi energy resources to Europe through the Southern Caucasus and Turkey. It is composed of four gas pipeline projects: the Interconnection Turkey–Greece–Italy (ITGI), Nabucco, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and White Stream (from Georgia to Ukraine and Poland).

3. The ‘wider Black Sea region’ is obviously a conceptual EU artefact. It is both a product of the traditional problem-solving regional approach of the EU and the need to have the Southern Caucasus, especially Azerbaijan, ‘on board’ as a producer. See the European Commission's website: http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/blacksea/index_en.htm

4. See speech by the President of the European Commission R. Prodi, ‘A wider Europe: a proximity policy as the key to stability’, Sixth ECSA world conference, 5–6 December 2002, Europe Press Release, Brussels, SPEECH/02/619.

5. See speech by Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Energy, ‘Opening speech at the external energy policy conference’, 20 November 2006, Brussels, SPEECH/06/712.

6. The Energy Community had the initial objective of creating a regional energy market in South East Europe, with the goal of framing the process of extending the energy acquis to candidate countries. EaP partners have the choice whether or not to become part of the Community. It is a highly institutionalised institution governed by a Ministerial Council, a regulatory Board, and a Secretariat in charge of monitoring the implementation of binding regulations.

7. Panel on European Security Challenges, Halki International Seminars, June 2009; see also Egenhofer and Behrens (2009).

8. Putin's declarations at the South Stream project signing ceremony, 28 February 2008.

9. In Germany, the perception of Russia as a reliable energy partner since the 1970s supply agreements with the Soviet Union prevented, prior to 2006, a more assertive external energy policy within the EU in order to establish alternative supply sources (interview with a German expert, Tbilisi, 13 May 2009).

10. ‘The Geopolitical Fortunes of Russia and China’, Stratfor Geopolitical Diary, 16 February 2010.

11. The 2008 August War between Russia and Georgia put into question the reliability of the BTC and BTE (Blank 2009, p. 430); the BTC was closed during the conflict.

12. See ‘A Slight Thaw’; Financial Times, 4 December 2009; or The Economist, 6 March 2010. The Visegrád group is formed by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

13. Interview with an officer of the Georgian Ministry of Energy, Tbilisi, 20 May 2009.

14. ‘Economic Recovery: Second Batch of 4 bln-euro Package Goes to 43 Pipeline and Electricity Projects’, Europa Press Release, 4 March 2010.

15. ‘Nabucco Seen Asking EIB for up to 2 billion Euro’, Reuters, 5 February 2010.