BP offshore

Caspian Sea deal heralds new exploration

AKTAU, August 13, 2018 – Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan have agreed “in principle” to delineate their maritime borders in the Caspian Sea, potentially opening the way to massive new oil and gas exploration, international media reported on Sunday.

 

“We have established 15-mile-wide territorial waters whose borders become state borders,” said Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’ s president, cited by Reuters. “Adjacent to the territorial waters are 10 miles of fishing water where each state has exclusive fishing rights.”

Additional talks will nevertheless be required before the borders, subject to several disputes going back decades, are officially settled, the report added. At stake are several major energy and infrastructure projects, including a gas pipeline across the Caspian and the Kapaz/Serdar field offshore Azerbaijan.

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