Here’s who’s in charge of energy in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan, a very important country for the energy needs of Italy and Europe, is now a political dynasty. The in-depth analysis by Andrea Greco and Giuseppe Oddo taken from their new book "The gas weapon" (Feltrinelli)
Georgia and neighboring Azerbaijan constitute a strategic passage to transfer the oil and gas extracted in Central Asia to the Mediterranean, through the Black Sea or Turkey, avoiding transit through Russia and Iran.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, built in 2006 to evacuate Azerbaijani Caspian crude, runs along this corridor. The pipeline cuts through Azerbaijan, enters Georgia, climbs the Caucasus mountains up to 2800 metres, descends again and then diverts to Turkey, covering it all the way to the port of Ceyhan, on the Mediterranean. From here the oil is transported by ship to Europe (Italy is among the main buyers of Azerbaijani crude).
THE PAW OF THE UNITED STATES
Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova have converging interests: they must free their supply system from the Russian one, on which they depend beyond measure, and at the same time coexist with secessionism and Moscow's interference in their internal affairs.
Leveraging the concerns of these countries, the US favored their aggregation into Guam (from the initials of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova), established in 1997 as an informal group to address common problems in the field of energy and security and cooperate with NATO.
Guam is an anti-Russian union whose interests diverge from those of the Eurasian Economic Union of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In May 2006 it was transformed into the “Organization for Democracy and Economic Development Guam”, the only one among post-Soviet states that explicitly refers to democracy.
AZERBAIJAN IS A POLITICAL DYNASTY
But if there is hope in the democratic process of Ukraine and Moldova, the same cannot be said of Azerbaijan, which has become a political dynasty.
Ilham Aliev, the current president-dictator, succeeded his father Hydar in 2003 (who, after having been head of the KGB in Azerbaijan and then leader of the country, was admitted to the Politburo of the central committee of the CPSU and appointed vice-president of the Council of ministers of the USSR).
In post-Soviet Azerbaijan, from which half of Europe buys gas and oil , the Aliev family has been in power for thirty years.
(Excerpt from “ The gas weapon ”, the new book by Andrea Greco and Giuseppe Oddo)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/azerbaigian-famiglia-aliev/ on Sat, 07 Oct 2023 06:19:51 +0000.