International Affairs - West Asia
Syria and the Wider Region
The Hydrocarbon Dimension
Ambassador Prabhat P Shukla
December 2018
The Geopolitics of Oil and Gas in Central and West Asia over the Decades.
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Since natural gas from the Persian Gulf is produced more cheaply than in Russia, the latter has to find allies and measures to ensure that the alternative sources are stymied by one means or the other, especially for supplies to Europe. Syria offers an attractive pipeline option for the Persian Gulf producers, Iran and Qatar. That explains why Russia has committed so strongly to blocking that option. The other variant is LNG, delivered by tankers, which Qatar has developed very actively. This is where the politics between Qatar and the other Persian Gulf Arabs have come into confrontation. The entry of the US as a possible source of natural gas to Europe is a new factor. This is the essential economic and military play that has taken place since 2011, and forms the substance of the analysis that follows.
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A report was written in Dec 2018 to read full report please click here
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