Energy

On July 12, a Russian court in Southern Krasnodar upheld an appeal by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) after a previous ruling made last week by a district court ordered the oil transporter to cease operations due to ecological concerns. The initial decision led Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to look toward new routes for Kazakh energy exports. While the decision will suit Kazakhstan’s energy sector in the short-term, the persistent instability since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to result in Kazakhstan seeking to free itself from Russian dependence for the export of its energy resources in the medium to long term. For the Kremlin, Nur-Sultan’s willingness to engage with Western countries is a cause for concern and could signal the weakening of Russian hegemony in Central Asia. Kazakh oil may be flowing again from Novorossiysk but the damage to Russian-Kazakh relations has been done.

There are reports that the US may be about to broker a deal between Israel and Lebanon, resolving a long-standing dispute about their maritime border and the exploitation of two large oil and gas fields in the Levantine Basin. Amos Hochstein, the US Senior Advisor for Energy Security, this month mediated indirect talks between the two countries, who technically are still at war with each other, and have no formal diplomatic relations in an attempt to resolve the issue. After his meetings in Lebanon last week, it seemed that a breakthrough had finally been reached, when the Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, reportedly presented a unified position on behalf of the government, which offered the prospect for a compromise This new proposal would create an S shaped maritime border, granting Lebanon access to the whole of the Qana field, while leaving Israel the entirety of Karish. In the past, the lack of agreement within the Lebanese government, and its unwillingness to compromise had been the key factors holding back negotiations, and this new approach led Hochstein to strike an optimistic note, saying that Lebanon had taken “a very strong step forward”. The US Energy advisor will now relay the offer to Israel and await a response. Both countries stand to gain from a swift and peaceful resolution to this decade long problem which has prevented them from extracting any value out of the fields.