The Caspian Sea Region - Essay Example

Former oil industry executive, and now current American Vice-President Dick Cheney famously remarked, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian”.1 Accordingly, access to oil has quickly become a hotly contested issue with protagonists from East to West seeking to reap the benefits of the full-scale exploitation of what has quickly become one of the most geopolitically significant regions of the globe. Aiming to explore the strategic development of the Caspian Sea region and the emergence of this territory as a globally-contested hot-spot, this dissertation will seek to address a variety of important questions.

These include the following research questions which will guide this analysis: Accordingly, these questions and many more will guide our analysis of the role of intelligence in energy security in the Caspian Sea region. Seeking to provide a thorough and concise overview of the current challenges facing the full exploitation of a region which has quickly become strategically significant in geopolitical affairs, this essay will be organized in the following manner. Beginning with a brief overview of the research design, methodology, and data recovery employed, this section will be followed by a concise yet relevant historical analysis of the Caspian region as well as the historical antecedents to the development of the Caspian Sea region.

The Caspian Sea region is important to global energy markets as it is a newly discovered source of natural resources including oil and natural gas. Accordingly, this region has the potential to become a major exporter of oil and natural gas into the twenty-first century. After more than eight years of exploration and development, in May of 2005 oil from the southernmost sections of the Caspian Sea began pumping through a new pipeline established by a British Petroleum-led consortium to Ceyhan, a seaport on the Turkish coast.  Accordingly, the Caspian Sea region has become an important location for untapped natural resources since the collapse of the Soviet Union.