Given the volatility of the international Middle East oil market, as illustrated by the Iran-Iraqi war, the tanker attacks that accompanied it, through 1990-1991’s Desert Shield and Storm, the status and security of the burgeoning oil capacity of former Soviet republics makes the need for an understanding of the underlying issues all the more important.
The resultant treaty represented an uneasy compromise between the various Black Sea-Mediterranean maritime powers to define rights of passage and access to and from the Black Sea. The Turks were allowed to re-militarize the Straits, and the former International Commission designed at Lausanne for controlling the Straits was dissolved.
Russian interest in securing passage of its own warships while denying
it to all other non-Black Sea powers resulted from more than two centuries
of Russian naval interest in the Black Sea. This interest dated from the
Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca in 1774 and Catherine the Great’s annexation of
the Crimea in 1783, with the subsequent establishment of a Russian naval
base at Sevastopol.
The Montreaux Convention set limits on the tonnage and type of warships
allowed to pass the Straits, with advantages given to the Black Sea riverain
powers. In light of naval developments during the last sixty years as well
as the political cataclysms ending communism in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union, the current question is whether the Convention’s terms might
be altered in light of these changes.
The Adrianople Treaty opened the Straits to commercial shipping of all nations while the Ottoman Empire was at peace; the right of warships to pass the Straits was not mentioned. A result of this liberalisation was the explosive growth of the grain trade of southern Russia; Odessa became the fastest-growing city in the empire. Internal revolt in the Ottoman Empire four years later saw the Turks request and receive the dispatch of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and 11,000 troops to defend Constantinople. This action which resulted in the contentious Hunkar Iskelessi Treaty of 1833, whose vaguely-worded bilateral defensive clauses worried Western Europe that Russia had established a de facto protectorate over the Ottoman Empire. When Egyptian revolt flared again six years later, Western Europe intervened. Part of the settlement of the crisis was the July 13, 1841 Straits Convention, which closed the Straits to the warships of all countries with which the Ottoman Empire was at peace. This principle on the passage of combatants remained largely unchanged up to World War One.
The Crimean War had proved the vulnerability of the weak Russian Black Sea Fleet against superior naval forces introduced by France and Britain, non-Black Sea powers allied to the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Black Sea Fleet ships were sunk in Sevastopol, and the port subsequently besieged. The war ended with the "humiliating" Treaty of Paris, whereby Russia was barred from maintaining substantial naval forces on the Black Sea. It was only in 1870 that Russia denounced the treaty clauses barring her from having a naval presence on the Black Sea and began to rebuild a naval presence there.
During World War I the Straits were again closed to Russia by a hostile Ottoman Empire allied to Germany. The failure of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign to open a southern supply line to the Russians helped hasten their military collapse, which in turn, helped to topple the Romanovs. Turkish defenses of the Straits included mining and massive shore artillery emplacements, proving that a strong defense could prohibit the passage of the Royal Navy’s surface warships, which were forced instead to attempt an amphibious assault at the entrance to the Dardanelles.
Following Russia’s collapse in 1917 and the Ottoman Empire’s defeat
the following year, it became obvious that a new regime to cover the Straits
was needed. The issue by now was complex; as one legal expert has observed,
"The legal history of the Straits is shrouded to this day in lost texts,
secret protocols, linguistic divergences, factual discrepancies, and deliberate
falsifications of evidence."2 The immediate postwar era was a time
of revolution and confusion in both the former Russian Empire and the former
Ottoman Empire. The subsequent Treaty of Sevres of August 10, 1920 (never
ratified) would have opened the Straits in peacetime to all nations’ warships
and aircraft.
Three years later the interim Treaty of Lausanne (signed July 24, 1923)
basically kept the Straits open under international control, permitting
non-Black Sea powers to send forces into the Black Sea no greater than
the largest fleet maintained there.(3) The 1923 Lausanne
Convention was merely a stopgap measure which demilitarized the Straits,
leaving both Russia and Turkey vulnerable to the more powerful Mediterranean
powers. Such an unstable situation was to neither nation’s liking, and
at a suitable time the Montreaux Convention replaced it. The Montreaux
Conference was called to replace this ad hoc arrangement with something
more permanent.
The size of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet at the time of the Convention’s signature was roughly 70,000 tons total. Given the Soviet Union’s limited resources and her four widely-separated fleets she felt it necessary to maintain, relatively free passage of her warships was deemed essential. The USSR, however, did not want a situation similar to that in the Crimean War, where superior naval forces based in the Mediterranean would be free to pass the Straits and contest "command of the sea," to use Mahan’s phrase. Accordingly, the restrictions imposed on non-riparian states gave the USSR a safety valve on her southern coast, something that would prove very valuable in World War Two.
For its part, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet’s submarines undertook several combat patrols off the Bosphorus in 1941-2, with the intention of disrupting Italian and German shipping with Rumanian and Bulgarian ports. Several tankers were damaged in these attacks. The Soviet submarine campaigning reached its broadest scope in period January-October 1943, in which the majority of patrols were off the Crimea and the Bosphorus.
At the 1943 Teheran conference Stalin supported the idea that Turkey should enter the war on the side of the Allies, while Churchill supported the idea that the Soviet Union deserved "warm-water" ports. The idea of revising the Montreaux Convention was raised at the Yalta Conference as well.
As the war turned increasingly against the Axis, they began to push the terms of the Montreaux Convention. In May and June 1944 British intelligence numbered eight German escort ships and four patrol boats passing the Straits en route to the Aegean with the connivance of the Turkish Foreign Minister Numan Menemencioglu. When the British protested to President Ismet Inonu, one of the ships was searched, and as a consequence, Menemencioglu was fired.
The Turks broke relations with Germany in August 1944, although they
did not declare war until 22 February 1945. Four British minesweepers were
now sent to Istanbul to keep the Straits open, and the British crews were
given Turkish naval caps a la Goebben and Breslau to maintain the fiction
that the action was not a violation of the Montreaux Convention. The Straits
were opened to Soviet shipping in January 1945. At the Potsdam Conference
in July the Allies agreed that the problem of revising the Montreaux Convention
ought to be between the three Allied Powers and Turkey; the U.S. and Britain
subsequently submitted notes on the issue to Turkey.5
These competing alliance structures changed the balance of power in Europe, with both sides using their rights under international law to deploy maritime forces. The first significant appearance of Soviet sea power in the Mediterranean came in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the Soviet ‘Eskadra’ numbering 5-7 vessels. This presence rapidly expanded; by 1970, the eskadra maintained nearly 70 vessels in the eastern Mediterranean, with logistical support coming from the Black Sea. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Soviet Mediterranean forces numbered nearly 100 ships. This initial Soviet deployment in the eastern Mediterranean was to counter the American deployment SSBNs there. As American ballistic submarines improved in range and accuracy, the Soviets were drawn into blue water operations to hunt and destroy these boats. Naval air cover was necessary for the surface fleets to performs these tasks, and all of the USSR’s surface units for deploying air power at sea would be built in the Black Sea.
The geographical constraints on Soviet naval operations were painfully obvious to Admiral Gorshkov, head of the Soviet navy; as he wrote in his Morskaia Moshch’ Gosudarstva ("Sea Power and the State"), "It has so happened historically that our Fleet, not possessing [suitable] bases, to exit to the ocean must steam great distances and force narrows and straits controlled either by the navies of the imperialist governments, [or] constantly under surveillance of their allies in hostile military pacts."(6)
In such a situation, the Montreaux Convention’s strictures on the entry of foreign warships to the Black Sea became an increasingly valuable asset to Soviet ambitions, rather than constraining them.
The first Soviet carrier to be launched was the 18,000 ton Moskva commissioned in 1967, followed a year later by her sister ship Leningrad. Carrying 18 Kamov K-25 "Hormone" helicopters, the Soviet Union sidestepped protests about the ships passing the Straits by stating that the vessels were "anti-submarine vessels" (protivolodochnye kreisery) rather than aircraft carriers per se. Their armament backed up the Soviets’ claim of an ASW mission, consisting as it did of a twin SUW-N-1 launcher, twin RBU-6000 ASW mortars, and torpedo tubes. Their design was heavily influenced by the French carrier Jeanne d’Arc and the Italian Vittorio Veneto. Many Western analysts have concurred with an anti-submarine definition of the ships’ purpose, and protests over the passage of these warships through the Straits came to naught. At the time of her construction, the Moskva was the largest ship ever built by the Soviet Union.
An interim design project code named Orel would have given the USSR an 80,000 ton nuclear powered carrier with an air wing of seventy aircraft. Defense Minister Grechko was a strong proponent of the project, but with his death the project was shelved, and work continued on the Kiev class carriers.(7)
The 38,000 ton Kiev was the prototype of the second class of Soviet carrier; carrying a mixture of 27 Kamov K-25 helicopters and 12-15 Yak-36 ‘Forger’ aircraft, the Kiev passed the Straits on July 18, 1976, again to international protests about possible infractions of the Montreaux Convention.(8) Three more ships were later built in this class; Minsk, Baku (later renamed Admiral Gorshkov) and Novorossiysk; all three subsequently transited the Straits. A fifth unit of the class was approved in 1979, but not built. The aircraft carried by the Kiev were VSTOL aircraft, similar to (though not as versatile as) the ‘Harriers’ operated by the British Royal Navy. While a ship of the Kiev’s class would be no match for an American CVN, the ship none the less represented a substantial upgrading of Soviet abilities; what could be accomplished by similar warships in a limited combat role was illustrated by the Royal Navy’s use of HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes during the Falklands campaign in 1982.
The new and final Soviet design was a 65,000 ton fixed-wing carrier. Admiral Kuznetsov was in every respect a true aircraft carrier, a fact which no amount of dissimulation could hide.(9) This expansion of naval power was justified in Communist theory; in seeking support for his expansion of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Gorshkov quoted Frederich Engels;
"A modern warship is not merely a product of major industry, but at the same time a sample of it...The country with the more developed major industry enjoys almost a monopoly on the construction of these ships...Political power at sea, based on modern warships, is not at all exerted "directly", but just the opposite, it is exerted indirectly through economic strength."(10)
Aircraft for the new vessel included naval versions of the Sukhoi-25UTG ‘Frogfoot B’ and Sukhoi-27K ‘Flanker’. As observed during its working-up at Kubinka airfield near Moscow, the heart of the Kuznetsov’s air defense was to be the Sukhoi-33, a modified Sukhoi-27 ‘Flanker’ design. A second carrier, the Variag, was laid down in the Nikolaev yards, while the first was being outfitted.
As if to make a final gesture towards military might, the USSR commissioned the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soiuza Kuznetsov at Nikolaev on 21 January 1991. Within a year, the nation that built her would no longer exist, and the shipyards that constructed her would lie in a foreign nation. Furthermore, by this time the controversy about the necessity of such craft had escaped naval circles and was being debated by influential civilians. In a letter published in Izvestiia on 29 October 1991, Academician Georgii Arbatov, head of the influential Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies ridiculed the official figures given for the cost of the warship, derided the linguistic solipcisms that branded the carrier a tiazhelyi avianesushchii kreiser ("heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser"), and questioned the priorities that simultaneously deprived sailors and their families of a decent standard of living.( Even worse for the navy were the fissiparous pressures which threatened to tear apart the USSR. Even before the "formal" breakup of the USSR, Ukrainian representatives were attending an international conference held in London 24-26 October 1991 with NATO members and representatives of Western embassies on the issue of future relations between Ukraine and Russia. Major topics included the future of the Black Sea Fleet and the fate of nuclear weapons stationed on Ukrainian territory.
The passage of the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soiuza Kuznetsov provided a telling commentary on the Montreaux Convention; loaded, the vessel displaced more than the entire Soviet Fleet of 1936. Of course, one question that was raised was the quality of the ship and its armament; one Soviet naval captain was quoted by Nezavisimaiia Gazeta as stating that Soviet carrier craft had a range one-fifteenth that of Western aircraft. The Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soiuza Kuznetsov transited the Straits on 2 December 1991.
With the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soiuza Kuznetsov’s launching the Soviet
Union made tentative steps towards erasing the last area of unquestioned
NATO naval superiority, the capability to operate long-range aircraft at
sea. The new ship was dispatched to join the Northern Fleet; of Russia’s
two ocean-going navies, the one with the greater maintenance capability.
Laying on the stocks at Nikolaev, never to be completed, was the 75,000
ton nuclear-powered Ul’ianovsk.
In this final phase of the Cold War, in contrast, the U.S. carrier-building
program during the same period included three new CVNs under construction
in Newport News, VA; the USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71, the USS Abraham
Lincoln CVN-72, and the USS George Washington CVN-73. On 7 September 1996
the newest American carrier, the Harry S. Truman CVN-75 was launched at
Newport News shipyards.
American concern about Nikolaev was not limited to its shipbuilding capacity, either; according to the Defense Department’s Soviet Military Power, "a large percentage" of Soviet arms exports to the Third World were shipped from the "enormous port" of Nikolaev. Soviet naval and merchant ships also made extensive use of the Suez Canal; only those flying "flags of convenience" made more total transits.
The postscript to this enormous expenditure is a telling commentary on the bankruptcy of post-Communist Russia. Leningrad, Minsk and Ul’ianovsk were scrapped in 1992, to be followed by Novorossiysk the following year. Kiev was towed to the breakers’ yard in 1994, the Moskva in 1995. The Ukraine tried to sell the Variag; at one point China was named as possibly interested. The Ukrainian government ordered it scrapped in 1994. Similarly, Russia has been looking for a potential buyer for the Admiral Gorshkov, which now carries only helicopters, having had its YAK-38 ‘Forger’ aircraft retired. The malaise reflected the problems for Russian shipyards as a whole; for the period 1990-1995, not one major surface combatant had been completed, with only the Petr Velikyi cruiser being completed in the Baltic in 1996.
The Black Sea Fleet continues to be a source of tension between Russia
and Ukraine. Five years of negotiations have not definitely solved basing
and fleet division rights, and a number of Russian officers continue to
fly the old Soviet naval ensign. In September 1996 a Black Sea fleet warship
was barred from participating in Black Sea Partnership 96 because it flew
the Soviet ensign. The upshot of all this is that the strategic disparity
between the American and Russian navies is greater than any time in the
last thirty years, making the Montreaux Convention a useful fig leaf for
Russia for keeping large-scale foreign naval units out of the Black Sea.
Economic concerns had now replaced purely naval ones.
One of the first fruits of the post-Cold War atmosphere was the creation on 25 June 1992 in Istanbul of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Zone. Eleven nations signed the Bosphorus Statement: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. The tone of the document was explicitly economic; "Sharing the basic approach that freedom must also extend to the field of the rights and rules governed by the free market economy, recognizing that their efforts so far must be further upgraded by the establishment of solid and effective mechanisms in order to achieve a higher degree of economic cooperation." A supplemental statement on "Common Interests and Priorities declared, "The Participating States lack a modern transportation infrastructure. The construction of pipelines, railroads, highways, ports and other facilities has to be accelerated in order to speed up the flow of passengers, goods, and services."(11)
Looming in the background were some of the older, unresolved issues troubling Russian-Turkish relations. While the issue of warship passage quickly waned, the issue of commercial transit of the Straits quickly moved to center stage. In addition to the economic issues were the new political realities.
In place of the USSR, four new riparian states now bordered the Black Sea; Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia, none of whom had signed the Montreaux Convention. In addition, another signatory of the treaty had fractured into separate states; Yugoslavia had fissured into Croatia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia (consisting of the former regions of Yugoslavia, Montenegro and the autonomous region of Kossovo) and Macedonia.
For the CIS successor states to the USSR, the prime concern was the exploitation of nascent energy reserves in order to inject a quick suffusion of cash into their moribund economies. For the Turks, the issue was transit fees and environmental safety. The latter issue had been completely ignored when the Montreaux Convention had been drawn up.
The potential of the region is immense; according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy the combined energy potential reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan range from sixteen to nineteen billion barrels of oil, and one hundred thirty-nine to three hundred twenty-four trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas. Some estimates for the region range as high as forty-two to two hundred billion barrels of reserves. Collectively the potential for the region rivals that of the Persian Gulf. The money collectively invested in the region by the two principal consortiums in Azerbaijan and Kazakstan has surpassed $30 billion making the Caspian oil projects the most expensive among the nations of the former Soviet Union, equaled only by Western investment in the Russian Federation’s energy projects.
For its part, the Russian Federation attempted to exert pressure on the newly-independent oil-rich states by arguing that the status of the Caspian should be redefined in light of the USSR’s collapse; the last agreement on the Caspian had been signed by Iran and the USSR in 1946. Four newly-independent states now squabbled over the Caspian rights of the erstwhile USSR; the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan.
Azeri pragmatism was not averse to dealing with their former Russian
overlords; in September 1996 it was announced that the State Oil Company
of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar) was teaming up with the Russian company
Lukoil to renew the Bib-Eybat Caspian offshore field, twelve miles southwest
of Baku; the crude was to be refined locally to provide gasoline for the
local market.
In the debris of the post-Communist world, former Soviet neighbors
had other concerns besides money. In May 1994 the Turkish government passed
regulations to monitor commercial transit of the Straits, which entered
into force on 1 July 1994.
The new regulations were very detailed. Some of the more important regulations relating to tanker traffic were: ship height was limited to 190 feet: vessels carrying hazardous materials were restricted to single passage at the same time; daylight passage was required of all ships over 200 meters, and passage required favorable weather. In order to bolster their case, Ankara approached the International Maritime Organization, whose Maritime Safety Committee on 16-25 May 1994 approved many of the measures.
Russian reaction was inevitable; the following month the Russian Foreign Ministry protested the new regulations, charging that Turkey had unilaterally violated the Montreaux Convention, a charge rich with irony given Moscow’s elastic interpretation of clauses relating to carriers. Russia was joined in its claims that the new regulations contravened the Montreaux Convention by Dubai, Greece and the Greek portion of Cyprus. The wrangle eventually led to an exchange of letters with the General Secretary of the United Nations. Turkish officials in defending the regulations pointed out that the magnitude of environmental catastrophes in the Russian Federation indicated that such concerns were secondary to the search for hard currency for its stagnating economy.
The Turks had good reason to be nervous about the environmental impact
of increased tanker passage of the Straits. In 1979 the Independenta
lost 93,000 tons of oil there; in contrast, the better known Exxon Valdez
ten years later dumped 37,000 tons of oil into Prince William Sound.
Turkish concern with oil and the environment was not limited to foreign
shipping; in early December 1996 the Turkish tanker Saraykoy caught fire
off the port of Samsun in the Black Sea; while the fire was extinguished
after a day, oil was released into the water by the accident. As if to
underscore the potential problems with tankers in the Straits, on 13 February
1997 a TPAO tanker caught fire in the Tuzla shipyards, setting four other
ships ablaze. After the flames were extinguished, a determination had to
be made if the ship would be scrapped. The Turkish Environment Minister,
Ziyaettin Tokan, commented that it would take a long time to clean up the
environmental consequences of the conflagration.(12)
For the Russians, whose shipping composed nearly 25% of the transit
trade through the Straits, Turkey’s new regulations were a threat. They
envisaged a large percentage of the Azeri "new oil" transiting via pipeline
across Russian territory. The pipeline transit fees collected would be
used, among other things, to rebuild war-torn Chechnya and its oil facilities.
If the Turks were not going to allow increased Bosphorus shipping, then
such a plan would have to be abandoned.
The Turks countered Russian charges of chauvinism by highlighting Russian resources involved with disaster in the Straits. On 13 March 1994, the Cypriot Nassia, laden with Novorossiysk oil collided with the Cypriot Sea Broker at the entrance to the Bosphorus. Thirty died in the accident; the Nassia, carrying 19,000,000 gallons of crude had three of its ten tanks ruptured, and drifted burning for nearly a week, causing $1,000,000,000 in damages and closing the Bosphorus for a week.13 VLCC (Very Large Crude Carriers) can carry more than four times this amount.
The Bosphorus is one of the world’s busiest shipping channels, handling nearly 45,000 transits per year, a volume nearly three times that of the Suez Canal. Two major bridges span the Bosphorus, and traversing its shores are 13,000 commuter ferry crossings along with thousands of pleasure craft.14 Oil currently accounts for 32,000,000 tons of the Straits shipping traffic, or 25-30% of the total tonnage annually transhipped there.15 Turkey’s Energy Minister Husnu Dogan estimated that the Straits’ oil-carrying capacity could be extended by an additional 20% to 37,000,000 tons, a figure clearly below Russia’s expectations.
The introduction of large tankers into the Bosphorus would greatly complicate this picture. During the period 1992-5 only seven ships of 100,000 tons traversed the Bosphorus; the passage was so difficult that the Bosphorus was closed to other shipping. Yet postwar instability on narrow waterways in the Middle East had led to the development of ever larger tankers.
The Middle East Suez crisis of 1956 which had closed both the Suez Canal and Mediterranean pipelines had provided initial the impetus to build larger ships; a decade later, 300,000 ton tankers were poised to enter the world’s shipping lanes. The 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars further spurred the development of ULCCs (ultra large crude carriers); again faced with the closure of the Suez Canal, these massive ships provided the only economical means of oceanic bulk petroleum transport by sea. By the late 1970s plans were on the drawing boards in Japan for a U.L.C.C. of 800,000 tons.
The scale of the looming problem is not insignificant. In 1995 the "early oil" production of the Azerbaijan International Operating Company’s (AIOC) Azeri, Chiraz and Guneshli fields was estimated initially to be 4,000,000 barrels per annum, rising quickly to 35-40,000,000 barrels; this number does not include any other Azeri fields or Central Asian fields that might be interlinked into the pipeline.16 The three fields have estimated reserves of 4,000,000,000 barrels.17 If conditions remain stable in the region, one regional specialist estimates that by the end of 1997 Azerbaijan could be producing 15-18,000,000 tons per annum.18 Another source compares the reserves to those of Kuwait. The bulk of the foreign investment is American. Turkish investment in the AIOC Consortium developing Azeri, Chiraz and Guneshli is slight, only 6.75%; the Russian Lukoil share is 10%, while assorted American companies account for 43.7%.(19)
In the ongoing conflict over increased tanker traffic the Turks have
not limited themselves to warning the Azeris; on an official visit to Samarkand
on 8 May 1995, Turkish President Suleyman Demirel was explicit; "The party
that tries to increase the load on the straits excessively will find its
tankers stacking up at the entrance of these straits."(20)
Nor were the Caspian reserves the only potential Black Sea problem;
in January 1996 Moldova’s state oil company, Tiras-Petrol began seeking
foreign investment both to tap its reserves and help transport their products
to foreign markets, adding a further potential threat to Straits shipping.
For the Azeris, the thirty-year 1994 AIOC agreement was a godsend.
Still reeling from its war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the bankrupt
Azeri economy badly needed an infusion of Western capital into its most
potentially profitable industry. Its oil industry was plagued by obsolete
equipment and declining output, which by 1990 had dropped to its 1900 level.(21)
Investment in Azerbaijan was not limited to energy production. Here Turkey swiftly moved to dominance in the developing Azeri market economy; according to the Azeri government of the 1006 joint companies established in Azerbaijan in 1996, 444 were Turkish. In contrast, Russia ranked third with eighty-eight.(22) The major economic prize, remained petroleum, however, and dominating this issue was the question of what route (or routes) pipelines would take in bringing Central Asian oil and natural gas to foreign markets.
There were four major pipeline possibilities, from "north" to "south." The "northern" Black Sea route would run Baku-Grozny-Tikhoretsk-Novorossiysk. While this pipeline already exists, it is in serious need of upgrading and repair. Furthermore, there are no guarantees that this route, passing through Chechnya, would be completely immune from terrorist attack. Novorossiysk is currently capable of handling tankers of up to 180,000 tons. If such tankers were used, they would be nearly double the size of ships that have thus far traversed the Straits.
The second possibility is a "southern" Black Sea route, running Baku-Tbilisi-Supsa. This pipeline runs through only two countries, Azerbaijan and Georgia; it already exists, but, like the northern route, would need extensive upgrading. There were substantial problems involved in bringing the Baku-Supsa line up to standard; the Baku-Agstafa 40-inch pipeline to the Georgian border had to be renovated, a 140 kilometer stretch running Agstafa-Tbilisi had to be built, and the Tbilisi-twenty-inch pipeline had to be reworked.(23)
In August 1995, the Turkish government threw its support behind this line, promising not only to supply the fullest rate structure and most favorable financing, but a promise to buy the totality of Azerbaijan’s "early oil" production shipped via the pipeline. Nor would this pipeline be limited to Azeri oil; a branch of this pipeline was intended to be extended to the Caspian port of Aktau for the transshipping of Kazak oil from tankers.
By late spring 1996, however, this pipeline proposal had been shelved by AIOC. A condition that probably influenced the AIOC to reject the Turkish offer was that the Turks wanted an upper limit to the carrying capacity of the pipeline. Turkey announced that it was abandoning the project on 9 May; simultaneously, Russia and Kazakstan signed a pipeline construction agreement for transiting Tengiz oil through Novorossiysk. By early August, however it was announced that AIOC had awarded a $275,000,000 contract to the British engineering firm Kvaerner John Brown Engineers & Constructors for a Baku-Supsa or Baku-Batumi pipeline.(24)
The third route, also favored by the Turks, is Baku-Georgia/Armenia-eastern Turkey-Ceyhan. This pipeline has yet to be constructed, and crosses four nations. The Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has a number of advantages. The port was the Western terminus of an Iraqi-Turkish pipeline, which was shut in 1990, and can handle VLCCs of up to 300,000 tons. Climatic conditions allow the port to be used year-round. The Turkish economy, in continuing to support United Nations sanctions against Iraq has lost billions of dollars as this facility has stayed idle.
In mid-January 1994 the Turkish government first put forward a concrete proposal for an extensive pipeline that would originate in Kazakstan, transit Azerbaijan via Baku and terminate at Ceyhan. The Turks proposed to finance the Turkish section of the pipeline, or, if necessary, the entire project, provide security, purchase a given amount of the oil, and be flexible on the transit fee. The pipeline was estimated to cost about $2,000,000,000, and have a capacity of 45,000,000 tons.(25)
Russia was originally strongly opposed to this route, but there are signs that this might be changing, at least unofficially; in January 1997 the Russian company Transneft announced that it would participate in construction of the Ceyhan line if Azerbaijan agreed. Company president Valerii Chernaev noted that Transneft was willing to participate on any aspect of the pipeline; his company had sent an official written response to proposals made during the Turkish Foreign Minister’s previous visit to Russia.(26)
The Russian government still heavily favors the Novorossiysk route; in early February 1997 the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Vadim Kuznetsov,said that Russia was willing to cooperate with Turkey in making the Straits safe for increased tanker traffic. Kuznetsov also held out the carrot of Russia constructing facilities to clean Istanbul’s industrial and waste products.(27)
As a third possibility Turkey offered a pipeline to their Black Sea
port of Batumi, though Ankara was much less enthusiastic about this route
as opposed to the Mediterranean one, as it raised the same concerns of
increased Straits tanker passage as the proposed Russian Novorossiysk pipeline.
The fourth and final route would be a Baku-Iran-Persian Gulf
pipeline. Given the militancy of Islamic Iran, this route would have the
greatest difficulty raising Western financing, but, given the financial
issues involved, these obstacles need not be insurmountable.
Of the four options, Turkey favors the third alternative Ceyhan route
as both the most environmentally benign and profitable. A compromise was
reached on 9 October 1995, initially to utilise both the Novorossiysk and
Batumi routes. The Novorossiysk route will require twenty-seven kilometers
of new pipeline; the Batumi pipeline requires one hundred and forty miles
of new pipeline.(28) The Azeri government and the AIOC favored the
"northern" route as of April 1996.
Russia remains heavily committed to the use of Novorossiysk. In December
1996 a $63,000,000 contract to upgrade the facility was signed with Bouygues
Offshore. The seventeen month project will double the port’s annual handling
capacity to 30,000,000 tons per year.(29) The current capacity
of Russia’s pipelines is approximately 100,000,000 tons per year. The same
month as the Bouygues agreement, Russia signed a joint venture contract
to construct a pipeline from the giant Kazakh Tengiz fields to the Black
Sea. The project is estimated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to cost
$2,000,000,000 and be in operation by 1999, with an eventual carrying capacity
of 1,500,000 barrels per day and 67,000,000 tons per year.(30)
The Tengiz output alone, if carried solely by tanker, would triple the
current rate of Bosphorus oil traffic, from its annual rate of 32,000,000
tons to 99,000,000 tons.
One characteristic shared by all the proposed routes is that they all pass through regions recently embroiled in conflict. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya—all have suffered the depredations of war, with all of the consequences implied of weaponry in terrorist hands, unresolved nationalist/cultural conflicts, etc.
The issue of terrorism is not an idle one; on 23 January 1997 Kurdish rebels attacked the Turkish Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline in Mardin, damaging the installation and causing a loss of oil; BOTAS (Turkish Oil Pipe line and Transportation A.S.) estimated the damage to be 400,000,000,000 TL.(31) The pipeline had been reopened the previous month under the terms of United Nations Security Council Resolution 986, which allows Iraq to export $2,000,000,000 worth of oil every six months to buy food and medicine, as well as defray UN costs and pay compensation to the Kuwaitis. Further complicating the regional situation was the flirtation of certain Russian government members with the Kurdish People’s Party; in February 1997 the Committee on Geopolitical Issues of the Russian Duma organized with PPK members a "Conference on Cooperation Between Russian and Kurdish People, which invoked a protest from the Turkish Embassy in Moscow.(32)
By late 1995 it still looked as if AIOC would split the "early oil" flow equally between the Novorossiysk and Supsa pipelines. Such a possibility was not economically attractive to Moscow; a proposed initial flow of only 2,500,000 tons per annum would not generate sufficient revenues to revive the Russian pipeline and port facilities, and it looked unlikely if Western finance would be inclined to underwrite such a debt-ridden project for a relatively slight return. The war in Chechnya had inflicted damage estimated at up to $500,000,000 on the pipeline.
In contrast to the war-torn Russian Federation provinces, the pipelines were part of Ankara’s ambitious plan to meet Turkey’s soaring energy needs. While Turkey was eager to become involved in the development of Central Asian energy resources, its interests were not limited to Central Asia. In January 1997, engineering work was completed on a $23,000,000,000 one hundred and sixty-two mile, forty inch pipeline to carry Iranian natural gas from Tabriz to Bazargan.(33)
Turkey’s increasing short-term energy needs are one area where the Russians could apply leverage on the initial choice of pipeline routes; Turkey’s burgeoning appetite for natural gas for electrical generation saw her trade with Russia in this commodity from 350,000,000 cubic meters in 1987 to 5,500,000,000 in 1993, for an increase of 1570% in six years.34 The same report forecast that Turkish demand for natural gas could rise to 25-30,000,000,000 cubic meters by the year 2000. Prior to the Tabriz-Bazargan pipeline coming fully online, Turkey is dependent on Russia for 75% of its domestic demand on natural gas, a source of potential Russian leverage over pipeline routes.(35)
A second possible pressure point for the Russians to use on Ankara would be the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Zone and its attendant Black Sea Development Bank.
The United States and other non-riparian states can argue from a number of legal viewpoints that they should be allowed naval freedom of action as regards the Straits. One basis for discussion could be the notes given to Turkey following the Potsdam Conference, in which the U.S. recognized the need for revision of the Montreaux Convention.
A second point of objection might be that the signatories of the Montreaux Convention in 1936 made no provision for technological maritime advances; Turkey itself in its reply to a Soviet note in 1946 suggested this as a basis for convening a conference (which was to include the United States) for discussion.
Supporting the technological argument for the need to revise the Convention would be the rebus sic stantibus principle of international law, which postulates that all treaties are tacitly concluded under the condition that the treaty remains in force only as long as the circumstances under which is was concluded and to which it applies remain substantially the same. It was this argument that Russia herself used in 1870 unilaterally to abrogate the 1856 Treaty of Paris clauses restricting her naval development on the Black Sea. The same legal principle could be used by Russia as regards the 1946 Soviet-Iranian Caspian agreement.
A further factor affecting Montreaux Convention considerations is technology. The growth in size and destructiveness of warships in the last sixty years, combined with the new political realties of new nation-states and vastly increased trade throughout the region would all seem to underscore the use of this argument.
Non Black Sea powers might benefit by replacing the Montreaux Convention with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, signed by 119 delegates (but not the US) on December 10, 1982. One interpreter of Part III of the Convention states,
"The Straits navigation provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention, on the other hand, have been interpreted to allow all vessels and aircraft, military as well as civilian, to engage in continuous and expeditious passage through, under, or over international straits enveloped by territorial seas, without prior notification to or authorization from states bordering straits."
It is unlikely that the United States will forever remain opposed to the Law of the Sea Convention; one immediate advantage to signing it would be that the United States under this line of interpretation would be fully within international law to conduct as large naval maneuvers in the Black Sea as she wanted with as many ships as she liked, including CVN task forces. In such an instance Russia might well be inclined to close this suddenly-opened "back door" by trading off her privileges under the Montreaux Convention.
One complication of the Novorossiysk, Supsa or Batumi routes yet to be addressed would be the question of protection of tankers should conflict again erupt in the region. Such scenarios need not be limited to the countries through whose territory the pipeline passes; relations between Russia and Ukraine remain strained, especially over such issues as energy costs, the division of the Black Sea Fleet, and the status of Sevastopol.
The military tension over Straits passage is not limited to the Black Sea. At the southern end of the Straits, off the Dardanelles, Greek-Turkish relations are severely strained over divided Cyprus. The decision in January 1997 of Greek Cyprus to purchase Russian S-300 anti-aircraft systems was severely criticized by the US State Department as "a step down the wrong path." The same month, one source put new Greek Cypriot military spending on new military systems at $2,000,000 per day. In the event of a shooting war between two American NATO allies, a NATO option of convoy would be out of the question, while Western forces would be severely constrained by the Montreaux Convention over the naval units they could send into the Black Sea.
It is most unlikely that Western companies would be willing to see tens
of billions of dollars of assets put at risk in one of the more volatile
regions of the world because of a sixty year-old treaty that many would
argue is superseded by United Nations legislation. It is likely that they
would strongly press for security guarantees, if not from the United States,
then from the United Nations.
During the Iran-Iraqi War the West was willing to send considerable
naval forces into the Persian Gulf to protect tankers; such a surge of
naval force would be impossible under the current Montreaux warship passage
regulations. Western deployment of task forces into the Black Sea to protect
oil shipments would open a whole new series of problems, particularly
if such deployments included Western aircraft carriers.
For its part, despite the escalating conflict with the Russians over tanker transits of the Straits, the Turks have made clear their stand on the Montreaux Convention; on 9 May 1996 Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Nurettin Nurkan addressed the tanker issue and the Straits, noting "We have no intention of revising the Montreaux Convention."
One unknown is what the Russian reaction to such an attempt by the U.S. and its NATO allies to revise the Convention would be. For the Russians their greatest desire in relations with the U.S. in the past has been for another SALT-type of arms limitation agreement, although the Duma is currently blocking ratification of SALT 2. The introduction of Western carrier forces into the Black Sea could be perceived as upsetting the strategic equilibrium. During the SALT I Senate hearings during August-September 1972, American CVNs were characterized as strategic weapons; the fact that the USSR did not possess any made a number of Senators view the proposed treaty more favorably. As Admiral Rickover observed in testimony before Congress,
"For the foreseeable future, the aircraft carrier will be the principal offensive striking arm of the Navy in nonnuclear war. No other weapon system under development can replace the long-range sustained, concentrated firepower of the carrier air wing."
The new economic realities of resource exploitation for the northern
and eastern nations of the Black Sea region may well obviate their traditional
reluctance to the operation of Western sea power there. If the Russians
were to push for an abolition of the Montreaux Convention on the argument
of future tanker security, they could well bring not only their own pressure
to bear on the Turks, but a substantial element of American pressure as
well. If the projections about Central Asian oil reserves are accurate,
then it is clear that the shipping capacity of the Bosphorus would be overwhelmed.
In such an instance, a compromise giving the Turks Ceyhan and the Russians
Novorossiysk might well be the best solution.
2. William E. Butler, The Soviet Union and the Law of the Sea,
Baltimore, 1971, p.118.
3. Deak, op. cit., p.106.
4. The 25,000 ton clause was a concession to the Soviet Union, whose battleship Parizh Communa approached that figure. See D.A. Rowth, "The Montreaux Convention regarding the Regime of the Black Sea Straits" in Arnold J. Toynbee, ed. Survey of International Affairs 1936, London, 1937, p.615.
5. The minutes of the Potsdam Conference clearly show that the U.S. and Britain were willing at the time to compromise on the issue of Russian passage of the Straits. Vali, op. cit., pp.355-6.
6. Sergei Gorshkov, Morskaia Moshch’ Gosudarstva, Moskva, 1979, p.265.
7. George F. Karus, "Appearances Were Deceiving," Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, December 1992, p.120.
8. "A Soviet Carrier enters Mediterranean First Time," New York Times 19-VII-1976, p.4.
9. A.S. Pavlov, Voenno-Morskoi Flot Rossii i SNG 1992 g., Iakutsk, 1992, pp.36-8; Soviet Military Power, Washington D.C., 1986, 5th ed., pp.5, 81.
10. Frederich Engels, Izbrannye Voennye Proizvedenie, Moskva, 1957, pp.17-18; quoted by Admiral Sergei Gorshkov in "Voenno-Morskie Floty v Voinakh i v Mirnoe Vremiia," Morskoi Sbornik, December 1972, p.15.
11. "Black Sea Economic Cooperation: Common Interests and Priorities," [n.d.] @ http://www.turkey.org/bsec2.htm p.1.
12. "Big Fire in Tuzla Shipyard," Turkish Press Review 14 February 1997 @ http://www.turkey.org/news97/e021497.htm p.1.
13. "Table 2: Selected Major Oil Spills...", op. cit.
14. Annex; Turkish Regulations Regarding Maritime Traffic in the Turkish Straits and the Sea of Marmara" @ http://www.turkey.org/groupc/Water/strait/maritime.htm p.2.
15. Ercan Ersoy, "Chevron Talks Straits, Pipeline with Turkey, Reuters, 17 May 1996 p.1.
16. Marcus Hopkins, "Environmental Risks of Oil Transported Through the Bosphorus," Azerbaijani International, Autumn 1993.
17. "Oil Consortium Agreement with Azerbaijan" @ http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/ted/azeri.htm, p.1.
18. Ghia Nodia, "Transcaucasia: Stable Enough for Oil to Flow?" Presentation to Central Asian Forum, Washington D.C., 8-1-1997.
19."Caspian Sea Region" @http://www.auguste.com:80/planet/secop/i3.htm.
20. Yusuf Kanli, "President Demirel Says Straits Cannot be Used for Increased Transportation of Caspian Oil," Turkish Daily News 10 May 1996 @ http://www.turkey.org.news/e051096.htm p.4.
21. Hugh Pope, "Britain is Set to Cash in the Oil Rush in Azerbaijan," The Independent 27-IX-1994.
22. Turkish Press Review 3 January 1997 @ http://www.turkey.org/news97/e010397.htm p.2.
23. Turkish Daily News 17 October 1995 @ http://www.turkey.org/news/101795.htm p.1.
24. "Kvaerner John Brown to Design Caspian Pipeline" 8/12/96 @ http://www.oilonline.com/news/bbrown2.htm p.1.
25. Ersoy, "Chevron...," op. cit., p.1.
26. Turkish Press Review, 8 January 1997 @ http://www.turkey.org/news97/e010897.htm p.2.
27. "Russia Seeking a New Bosphorus Deal" Turkish Press
Review, 12 February 1997 @
http://www.turkey.org/news97/e021297.htm
p.3.
28. "Consortium...", op. cit., p.3.
29. "Novorossiisk terminal to be upgraded" in Steve Schutlz, World Maritime News - 13 Dec., 1996 @ http://www.aajs.com/shipint/worldmar.html p.6.
30. "Chevron, Partners Sign Caspian Pipeline Agreement" 12/17/1996 @ http://www.oilonline.com/news/ ichevcpc.htm.
31. Turkish News Review 24 January 1997 @ http://wwww.turkey.org/news 97/e012497 p.2.
32. "Russia Hosts PKK Conference" Turkish Press Review 14 February 1997 @ http://www.turkey.org/news97/e021497.htm p.1.
33. Turkish Press Review 22 January 1997 @ http://www.turkey.org/news97/e012297.htm p.3.
34. "The Electrical Generating Equipment Market in Turkey," International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington DC, Feb. 1994, p.1.
35. "Turkey’s Need for Natural Gas," August 1996
@ http://www.turkey.org/releases/082696.htm
p.1.