ENERGY: The Great Pipeline Opera. By Daniel Freifeld (georgiandaily.com)

Inside the European pipeline fantasy that became a real-life gas war with Russia.

When Joschka Fischer's lucrative new job as the "political communications advisor" to a consortium of European energy companies was leaked to a German business publication this summer, there was one comment that stood out. "Welcome to the club," said Gerhard Schröder, an even more highly paid advocate for the other side in Europe's increasingly politicized energy war.
Schröder's remark was short, snide -- and very much to the point. For eight years, the two men had led Germany together, with Schröder ruling as its center-left chancellor and Fischer as his foreign minister. Their long-running partnership had survived a particularly complicated era in post-Cold War Europe, and publicly Fischer had always been supportive, even telling Der Spiegel that Schröder "will go down in the history books as a great chancellor."
But since their coalition government collapsed in 2005, Schröder's controversial work has led to an ever-more-public breach between the former allies. Less than one month before leaving the chancellorship, Schröder used his office to guarantee a $1.4 billion loan (later turned down) for a Kremlin-backed natural gas pipeline that would connect Russia to Germany via the Baltic seabed. Then, just days after stepping down, Schröder accepted a senior post with the pipeline consortium run by Russia's state gas monopoly Gazprom. The deal was a huge scandal inside Germany, where Schröder had already been known for years as Genosse der Bosse -- "comrade of the bosses."
The chancellor's move to the Kremlin energy payroll inspired a wave of alarm in Europe over its potentially dangerous dependence on Russia for natural gas. Moscow supplies about a third of the European Union's gas -- Europe's preferred heating source -- and some of its countries are 100 percent dependent on Russia. What's more, Europe's annual gas consumption is set to rise 40 percent by 2030, further stoking those fears about Russia. Several times in recent years, the Kremlin has abruptly cut off gas deliveries after disputes with key transit countries such as Ukraine, leaving millions of Europeans shivering in the winter cold.

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GEOPOLITIC: The Forgotten South Caucasus: Where Oil and Water Mix (circleofblue.org)

A "New Great Game" of Geopolitical Control Surfaces in Russia’s Old Backyard

by Nadya Ivanova

Maps by Hannah Nester and Eric DaighCircle of Blue

Almost 20 years after Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan bounced back to full national sovereignty following decades of Soviet control, the winds of change in the South Caucasus have largely faded, leaving behind a region whose geopolitical identity and long-term stability remain uncertain. Once off the radar of Soviet geopolitical analyses, water management problems are now emerging as a cross-cutting issue critical to the stability of volatile regional relations and delicate geopolitical dynamics in the area.
It is often assumed that competition for water will trigger conflict. But in the South Caucasus — a globally strategic corner of the world where Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia converge — a proposal to clean up and share management of the region’s largest river basin could well serve as a new route to political stability. And the consequences, diplomats and scientists say, could have strategic importance far beyond – to Europe, Russia, and the United States.

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