Caspian countries ready to end their sea of troubles | Financial Times

Caspian countries ready to end their sea of troubles | Financial Times:

When is a sea not a sea? The question has vexed the five states surrounding the Caspian Sea for 26 years. But the conundrum is set to be answered within days in a geopolitical breakthrough affecting both the global energy industry and Central Asian relations.


The Caspian, the world’s largest enclosed body of water, is rich in hydrocarbon deposits and a natural barrier between Turkmenistan’s large gas reserves and Europe. Once it was divided between the Soviet Union and Iran. But in 1992 the collapse of the USSR created four successor states with Caspian shores — Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan — and threw the status of the sea into a generation-long morass of diplomatic wrangling.

The impasse has stymied projects such as Turkmenistan’s proposed 300km-long undersea gas pipeline to Azerbaijan, to tap European markets.