ABSTRACT
Geopolitics is an extravagant and therefore appropriate word to describe the struggle for oil and gas in Siberia and the Caspian Sea area and for the right to deliver fuel to the world. Much is at stake: money, reform, power, security, development, and environment. Petroleum exports are key to Russian economic recovery and transition to a market-based democracy, a vital goal for both east and west. Oil was discovered bubbling to the surface on the Caspian at Baku a thousand years before the internal combustion engine was invented. Russian petroleum economist Eugene Khartukov notes that while the world oil price has been on a rollercoaster, Russian domestic oil prices have been flat. Refining of oil into useful products such as jet fuel, diesel fuel, heating oil, and gasoline suffered from a fundamental flaw in Soviet production, an emphasis on quantity over quality. Pipelines arid proposed pipelines trace the energy geopolitics of the former Soviet Union.
