Caspian Sea Dying and Alreading Threatening Offshore Oil Platforms, Transit and Existing Ports, Experts Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 14 – The Caspian Sea is dying as a result of rising pollution and falling water levels, and it is more immediately threatening the ability of many ports along its coast line to operate, according to a survey of expert opinion carried out by Maria Alekseyeva of The Insider.

    Far larger than the former Aral Sea which has already almost completely disappeared, what is happening in the Caspian is far more serious. Untreated sewage is flowing into the sea, contamination from oil and gas drilling, and declining water levels and circulation is killing off the animals and plants that it had supported, experts say (theins.ru/obshestvo/281241).

    Despite past denials, many Russian specialists on the sea now say it will be biologically dead soon and may disappear as a single sea by the end of this century. But precisely because the former doesn’t both some and the latter is beyond the lifetime of many, these disasters aren’t rattling the governments of the littoral states.

    But in addition to provide detailed information on both trends, Alekseyeva points to a third trend that may soon do so: the dying of the Caspian is already having a serious and negative impact on the major ports on its littoral, threatening the transit trade on which the countries both those countries and others depend.

    Falling water levels on the Caspian mean that many offshore oil platforms are no longer accessible by water and that pipelines which had passed along the bottom of the sea are now exposed and at risk of failing, experts on the region say. But more than that, the decline in water levels means that shipping lanes that had been open are now at risk of being closed.

    Ports, especially in the northern segment of the sea, are seeing their water areas and approaches dry up, forcing them to cut back by as much as 20 percent the amount of cargo carried by ships so that they can pass through the shallower water. And in some places, even dredging may not prevent such restrictions from increasing.

    And because these problems are far greater in the northern part of the Caspian than in the southern, that will make shipping via Russian and Kazakhstan ports less attractive and possible that that via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran more so, shifting the balance of economic and hence political power away from the north and toward the south.