In August 2008, the outline consensus agreement on the protection of the Caspian Sea, signed by Russia and Iran came into force.
Both countries thus made the Caspian Sea, in legal parlance, a territory subject to international agreement and law. They agree that the Sea is a unique biosphere park, the only area in the world where sturgeon can be found. Other people see the Caspian Sea as a place rich in crude oil and other mineral resources which are up for grab. This is what Andrei Grozin had to say on the critical issue.
Our European friends who pride themselves as frontline ecology activists display absolute inconsistency when it concerns their insatiable interest in the Caspian Sea. Any oil spill, pipeline rupture or manmade accident in the Caspian can result, in view of its land-locked nature, in colossal problem capable of destroying all living things in that Sea. But there is talk about the need to lay oil and gas pipelines on the seabed to explore and develop new oil deposits on the shelf and bed of the Caspian Sea. Russia believes that it is precisely the Caspian Sea biological varieties that make it more important in contemporary world. The present attempt to divide the Caspian Sea into national or even transnational ownership is illegal, said Mikhail Alexandrov.
Russia is guided by the fact that the status of the Caspian Sea has already been defined by the Russia-Iran agreement, a view backed by Iran. As successors to the Soviet Union, former republics in the USSR but now independent states should support Russia position. Oil Companies have now become so impudent that they are demanding the construction of a pipeline under the Caspian Sea, something that is absolutely impossible without the consent of all countries along the Caspian Sea, especially Russia and Iran, brains behind the legal definition of the status of the Sea, said Alexandrov. If anybody tries to lay a pipeline along the seabed of the Caspian without authorization, Russia and Iran can halt the construction, declared Alexandrov, adding “No investor in the world would put his money in such an enterprise after weighing the pros and cons”.
On the whole, all interested states will harmer out a preliminary agreement on the Caspian Sea on the basis of already existing one, concluded Alexandrov.
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