[dissident]

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Deniz_gas_field, the largest gas field is Shah Deniz with only up to 100 billion cubic meters of gas. Azeri, Chirag are oil fields. Shafag-Asiman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafag-Asiman) is a complex of fields that has up to 500 billion cubic meters of gas. Initial estimates are always rosy so this upper bound cannot be considered producible amount. So Azerbaijan can deliver 50 billion cubic meters of gas for about 10 years.

The Nabucco pipeline was aimed at supply Turkmen gas to the EU. But Turkmenistan has over-committed itself to supply China. Iran would be a perfect source for Nabucco since it has the second largest reserves in the world.

[sparky]

.
That's the politics of pipelinistan,
Central asia make a lot of promises but the juice goes to those who have laid the pipe
Nabucco is a dead parrot , not least because Russia doesn't want it and those bright western guys
never realized the Russians have to be on board ,
it's their backyard and they have a lot of weight there
all the pipe are now going East either to china or to Siberia then to the pacific
the only exception is the south stream being build under the Black sea

[Meneri]

BP, Azerbaijan, Shah Deniz... oil extraction kills people again.
A poor thing it actually is that here, in Azerbaijan, a country where I was born and make now my living, there is still no even a smell of freedom of speech in the air. Another death bringing accident killing 14 in BP platform operating in Shah Deniz appears now to be out of the press. My father is among the dead. The evil happen to the system on 22.08.13, 13:20 - emergency valves have thrown tones of oil into the surface... people have been send to isolate emergency system faults... 15 minutes... 13:35... site welding causes a death bringing fire. For my father's life BP gave our family 100 000 euro and another 50 000 for our silence about the accident killing him. The oil spill, fire and death of 14 workers in Azerbaijan are hidden from public now so thoroughly that I' sure not even all those investors, who keep on throwing mighty good amounts into BP operating in Azerbaijan, are aware on the accident that last week has ended lives of 14.

[ROCKMAN]

So sad to hear of your loss. I've known a number taken as your father was. I have learned there are no words to reduce your pain. The nephew of my friend was one of the men killed in the BP blowout in the Gulf of México several years ago. I had no words of comfort for him either. Likewise no amount of money will change the hurt felt by the survivors.

There many in the world who now know your feelings and understand. Not much comfort but know others now share your grief to some degree.

[BobInget]

Meneri, You have been extremely courageous bringing this report to PO News. I want thank you for that.
Please, take care of your family and yourself.

[ROCKMAN]

This BP Azerbaijan blowout is not a big secret anymore. One editorial on the accident:

http://www.gregpalast.com/bp-coverup-they-knew/

An interesting piece but too much emphasis on the cement issue IMHO. I won't go into the details again of bad cmt jobs but they are very common. BP's error was assuming their cmt was good and proceeded with an operation that would be very dangerous if there were a cmt failure. Not monitoring for the cmt failure possibility was the ultimate sin. Given the global bad PR that BP received over the Gulf of México blowout it's rather shocking IMHO that this story didn't come out at the time.

I'll dig around and look for more details on exactly what went sideways

[Pretorian]

For my father's life BP gave our family 100 000 euro and another 50 000 for our silence about the accident killing him.

I take it, you will be returning the 50 000 euros? Right?

The oil spill, fire and death of 14 workers in Azerbaijan are hidden from public now so thoroughly that I' sure not even all those investors, who keep on throwing mighty good amounts into BP operating in Azerbaijan, are aware on the accident that last week has ended lives of 14.

Every job, even the minimal wage one, carries risks just like any other activity in this universe and I'm sure any sane investor is aware of that, just like your father was. What in the world made you think BP investors care about things like that? Hundreds of McDonald's employees die every month while commuting to work, so? Don't get me wrong here-- but you took the money, didn't you. Both for death and for silence. Your were welcomed not to.

[ROCKMAN]

P – True but seldom that black and white. I’ve accepted those risks for the sake of the $. Twice I’ve had to soft ditch in choppers and twice I had to emergency evac off of a rig. As you say: my choice to be there…no one forced me. OTOH I’ve worked all the way from the board room to the drill floor and have seen callous attitudes at both ends. Managers that never gave a thought about the safety of the rig hands. And rig hands that didn’t care if the operators made or loss money as long as their paycheck showed up.

After 38 years I’ve learned there’s no point in trying to rationalize either side of the discussion. Which is also why I stopped going to memorial services years ago…at that point it just doesn’t matter very much.

[Tanada]

Russia is once again focusing on Azerbaijan’s attachment to Turkey and on its “Turkification” of the minority nationalities within its borders, something one advisor to the Kremlin says is a threat to stability in the region and to the interests of Russia and Iran (Ekonomicheskiye Izvestia, December 6). The warnings come amidst Russian concerns about the opening of the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) railway, which will allow Chinese and Central Asian goods to reach Europe while bypassing Russia (Turan Today, November 23; Ekonomicheskiye Izvestia, November 1; see EDM, October 16), as well as anger that Azerbaijan has become the first post-Soviet government to reject a Moscow-nominated ambassador to its capital (Ekonomicheskiye Izvestia, December 12; see EDM, December 5).

The construction of the BTK railway has been a long time coming, and Moscow has opposed it from the beginning, viewing it as a threat to Russian influence not only in the Caucasus but in Central Asia and with China as well (see EDM, January 31, 2013; October 16, 2013). Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani-Russian diplomatic spat over the appointment of a new ambassador to Baku is still intensifying. Azerbaijani officials explain that their anger was motivated by not being approached for agreement in advance as well as reservations about Moscow’s candidate who, they say, is pro-Armenian. At the same time, Russian commentators suggest that others, including Turkey and the United States, who have an anti-Russian agenda, are behind the conflict between Baku and Moscow (Narodnyye Novosti, December 12; see EDM), December 5).

Now, there are indications that Russia plans to counter Azerbaijan on both points—the BTK railroad and the dispute over the ambassador. And it may seek to do this by attacking Baku for its connections with Ankara as well as for its Turkification programs with regard to ethnic minorities in Azerbaijan. Moreover, it appears Russia my try to involve the Iranian government in that action, a prospect which significantly raises the stakes for Azerbaijan and its supporters in Turkey and the West. The clearest evidence of this strategy can be found in a new interview given to the Real Tribune portal by Ismail Shabanov, an ethnic Talysh who serves on the Russian Presidential Council on International Relations (Ekonomicheskiye Izvestia, December 6).

In this interview, Shabanov said bluntly that “the Turkification of Azerbaijan” and indeed Azerbaijan’s ties with Turkey and efforts to involve Ankara in the Caucasus are “a very dangerous development for Russia and Iran” and something the two powers must work together to oppose before things there become even more explosive. Indeed, he argued, “The restoration of the rights of the indigenous peoples [of Azerbaijan] corresponds to the strategic interests” of those two countries (Ekonomicheskiye Izvestia, December 6).

According to the Russian presidential advisor, the Azerbaijani authorities not only want Turkey to become a paramount power in the South Caucasus but are promoting Turkish-style repressions against ethnic minorities there, denying these peoples basic rights and even the possibility of asserting their identities. Baku sees in Turkey its basic protector and thus seeks to curry favor by pursuing a policy under the Aliyevs’ (President Ilham Aliyev and his late father and former president, Heydar) doctrine of “one people, two states” with regard to minorities that is even more Turkish than Turkey now is.

The Azerbaijani government “wants to legitimate a Turkish presence in Azerbaijan by declaring that Turkey supposedly has the right to take part in Caucasus affairs,” Shabanov asserted. But “they are deeply mistaken. First, the Trans-Caucasus [a common Russian name for the South Caucasus region] is not only Turkey.” It is at the intersect point of other powers as well, in particular Russia and Iran; and Baku forgets that Tehran, in the 1813 Gulistan Peace Treaty, transferred to Russia the predominant position in the region. “From this it follows,” the advisor continued, “only Russia and Persia have rights in the region.”

“If the Azerbaijanis really want to play with the Turks,” Shabanov added, they have to expect that others will play as well. The Talysh ethnic minority, for example, has the full right to turn to Russia and Iran for help, he argued. “Why is it then that the Azerbaijanis think that they can do whatever they want but that others cannot?” According to him, the Turks are not “so stupid” that they will play this game, but the Azerbaijanis appear not to understand just how dangerous the path on which they are embarked at home and abroad can become.

Azerbaijani state ideology is now based on a shameless “chauvinism,” one that blames Armenians for all of Baku’s own failures and seeks to suppress all minorities. Azerbaijan is not a democracy, and it is intolerant despite its claims to the contrary. But the dangers involved here are even greater than that, Shabanov said. “If Azerbaijan finally become a place des armes for pan-Turkism and radical Islam, then this will affect the entire Caucasus.” Neither Russia nor Iran will let that happen, he contended.

One of the first tasks of Moscow and Tehran is to dissuade Ankara from overstepping its bounds, something the two powers have already been doing with success, the advisor said. But equally important, they must “help restore the rights of the Talysh and Lezgins so that these peoples will not disappear.”

Azerbaijani outlets have not yet responded to Shabanov’s remarks, but it is almost certain that they will read them as an indication that Moscow intends to interfere in Azerbaijan’s domestic affairs even more directly than in the past. And this interference may come either via its embassy or, more likely (as has been true earlier), via Armenian actions. To the extent the Azerbaijani government reads the Russian advisor’s remarks in this way, tensions between Moscow and Baku will only grow, making what is already a tense situation even worse.

Turkification