Caspian Energy Resources and Global Energy Security: Challenges of Transfer to the World Markets

The geo-strategic situation of the Caspian region and exploration of its huge energy resources, are the main reasons for transforming the region into a center of political, military and economic rivalries and tensions in the last two decades. There are many questions to be answered regarding the Caspian energy resources. The main question is the actual share of such resources in the global energy security, and whether Caspian region could meet the concerns for energy security at national, regional and global levels. There are also other questions such as: the nature of the new great game emerged on the energy issue in the region, the main players of such game and the role of Islamic Republic of Iran, as a main transit route and a buyer and consumer of energy products in the Caspian region. In response to these questions, this article argues that the Caspian region, as a complementary source of energy, could play an important role in securing global energy demand and diversification of production sources, but it could not be considered as an alternative to the Persian Gulf region which still provides more than 60 percent of world demand to hydrocarbon energy resources. In this connection, Iran provides the shortest, safest and cheapest route for absorbing and transferring of Caspian energy resources to the world markets, or consuming them in its local market through the swap program. In this article, issues such as: the Caspian oil and gas reserves, programs for production and export, the challenges for transferring the products to the world markets, the role of the region in the global energy security and finally, the Iranian perspective vis-à-vis Caspian energy security will be discussed.