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Kazakhstan will consider pumping its oil through Russian pipelines as an alternative to shipping via tanker to Azerbaijan for transport through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, Turkish daily Referans reported Aug. 21. Kazakhstan currently ships up to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) via tanker across the Caspian Sea to the BTC, filling half the capacity of that pipeline. According to Stratfor sources in the region, the move could be an initial indication of a larger decision by Kazakhstan to give up on the BTC altogether.
It therefore seems that Kazakhstan is choosing to reorient its energy toward Russia, at least in the short term. Alternatives to Russia — particularly China — will still be available, but the hope to diversify energy shipments via the Georgian corridor toward the Western markets appears to be dashed.
Russia’s resurgence in its periphery — most prominently brought into focus by the intervention in Georgia following Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, but by no means limited to that event — has led to a cascade of reassessments by former Soviet republics and Russia’s close neighbors and regional rivals. Of the former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan is probably the most exposed to Russia; a third of the Kazakh population is ethnically Russian, and large population centers in the country are easily within the Russian military’s reach. There is also a large Kazakh population that works in Russia and sends a lot of remittances back to Kazakhstan. Furthermore, there are no natural barriers between the flat Kazakhstan and Russia, and most Kazakh infrastructure is hooked into old Soviet routes — particularly in the energy sector but also the general transportation networks.
In terms of security, Kazakhstan — and Central Asia as a whole — has never seriously flirted with the West. It has never sought membership in NATO, unlike Georgia and Ukraine, and has always understood that Russia is its main security partner in the region. This is because of Kazakhstan’s vulnerability to Russia, and because simple geography puts Kazakhstan too far from any significant Western influence, with its fellow Central Asian republics to the south (and Iran and Pakistan beyond them) and the Caspian Sea and the Russian-controlled Volga region to the west.
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