Is the posturing about Crimea really all about....oil?

[Xithras]

I have to admit that one part of the whole Crimea debacle has had me puzzled: Why is Ukraine so insistent on holding on to it? After all, Crimea has never been a part of Ukraine historically. It only became "Ukrainian" when Nikita Khrushchev, who had governed Ukraine before WW2 and oversaw its reconstruction after the war ended, carved Crimea away from Russia and handed it to Ukraine as a "gift" after rising to lead the entire Soviet Union. The naval bases really aren't an issue, as Ukraine has bigger and better ports only a short distance away in Odessa that are more than capable of taking on the fleet. And it can't be an ethnic thing, as ethnic Ukrainians are a minority in Crimea, and that minority population has largely emigrated to the peninsula since the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Taken that way, it seems almost suicidally stupid for Ukraine to risk a war with Russia over a region that they only have tenuous connections with. Why would they bother?

And then I stumbled across this:

Losing Crimea Could Sink Ukraine's Offshore Oil and Gas Hopes
Without Crimea, Ukraine looks set to lose an important piece of its economic and energy future: valuable undersea oil and gas fields that lie just offshore the Crimean peninsula. ... Before the overthrow of former President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine was on the verge of signing a deal with a group, including Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, that was prepared to spend $735 million to drill two wells off Crimea’s southwest coast. “Exxon and Shell are now in a legal limbo.” If Crimea votes in a March 16 referendum to secede from Ukraine, the government in Kiev “may soon no longer have jurisdiction over the region.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-11/losing-crimea-could-sink-ukraines-offshore-oil-and-gas-hopes

and this one

Kiev threatened with loss of Crimea-based oil giant
On Wednesday, Rustam Temirgaliyev, Crimean first deputy prime minister, told Interfax that the Crimean authorities were planning to take over state-owned giant, Chornomornaftogaz, which implements offshore oil and gas projects in the Black Sea and Azov Sea, “in the near future”... In November, Chornomornaftogaz signed a production sharing agreement with Dutch company Eni and EDF of France for the development of a number of hydrocarbon blocks in the Black Sea shelf. According to Ukraine’s energy ministry, these foreign companies are due to invest about $350m at the first stage of the project.
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/03/12/kiev-threatened-with-loss-of-crimea-based-oil-giant/#axzz2vrgsqv5p


Are we getting played for fools and marching toward war so that the oil companies can protect their profits...again?

[unblock]

1. don't be ridiculous!

it's about oil *and gas*!

[Scuba]

2. Well, duh.

[Lasher]

3. I was having this very same thought process myself.

You've outlined it nicely.

[geek tragedy]

4. Moscow wants Ukraine's gas reserves. Crimea is chicken feed compared

to the big prize, Ukraine.

[Catherina]

5. Yes. Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry

Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry
Resource scarcity, competition to dominate Eurasian energy corridors, are behind Russian militarism and US interference



Russia's armed intervention in the Crimea undoubtedly illustrates President Putin's ruthless determination to get his way in Ukraine. But less attention has been paid to the role of the United States in interfering in Ukrainian politics and civil society. Both powers are motivated by the desire to ensure that a geostrategically pivotal country with respect to control of critical energy pipeline routes remains in their own sphere of influence.

...

But US efforts to turn the political tide in Ukraine away from Russian influence began much earlier. In 2004, the Bush administration had given $65 million to provide 'democracy training' to opposition leaders and political activists aligned with them, including paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet US leaders and help underwrite exit polls indicating he won disputed elections.

...

What direction might that be? A glimpse of an answer was provided over a decade ago by Professor R. Craig Nation, Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, in a NATO publication:

"Ukraine is increasingly perceived to be critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin to European markets... Considerable competition has already emerged over the construction of pipelines. Whether Ukraine will provide alternative routes helping to diversify access, as the West would prefer, or 'find itself forced to play the role of a Russian subsidiary,' remains to be seen."

A more recent US State Department-sponsored report notes that "Ukraine's strategic location between the main energy producers (Russia and the Caspian Sea area) and consumers in the Eurasian region, its large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities", make the country "a potentially crucial player in European energy transit" - a position that will "grow as Western European demands for Russian and Caspian gas and oil continue to increase."

Ukraine's overwhelming dependence on Russian energy imports, however, has had "negative implications for US strategy in the region," in particular the strategy of:

"... supporting multiple pipeline routes on the East–West axis as a way of helping promote a more pluralistic system in the region as an alternative to continued Russian hegemony."

...

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar. He is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization among other books. He writes for the Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises on his Earth insight blog

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/06/ukraine-crisis-great-power-oil-gas-rivals-pipelines