On 14 December 2005, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened the Kazakh-China oil pipeline with the push of a ceremonial button.
BBC coverage, in this article, is so scant one might get the impression the United States controlled the venture till the report goes on to state that, “Kazakhstan is also in talks about exporting its oil through the new Baku-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean which opened earlier this year.” If this new pipeline was U.S. controlled, why hesitate to sign on with the Washington-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC)?
GasandOil.com posted this article on 28/11/05 from Asia Pulse in which ownership is made more clear. The pipeline was built by Kazakhstan National Petroleum and Natural Gas Company and the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), the latter company particularly jubliant it had overcome all legal obstacles to its acquistion of Canadian-based PetroKazakhstan in the week before the pipeline’s completion.
This seemed to be an event highly relevant to the current campaign against Iran. I refreshed my memory on stans politics by rereading F William Engdahl‘s Revolution, geopolitics and pipelines then read his opinion on this pipeline published by Asia Times on 15 December 2005.
Simply put, the United States stands to lose major leverage over the entire strategic Eurasian region with the latest developments. The Kazakh developments also have more than a little to do with the fact that the Washington war drums are beating loudly against Iran.