The Caspian Sea - The Environment.

The Caspian is a polluted area. The sea is "oily" because of emissions from undersea oil and gas wells. But oil-related pollution is less serious than it sometimes seems, because most hydrocarbons deteriorate in seawater. Far more serious are chemical and domestic wastes, mostly pouring untreated into the sea. As a result, the sea's population of sturgeons, the source of caviar which is getting more expensive, is under threat.

While the Aral Sea has been drying up rapidly, the Caspian Sea has risen by about three metres since 1978. In some places the sea has advanced inland by more than 70 km. Resultant flooding has caused serious problems to oil operators. At Tengiz in Kazakhstan, for example, more than 100 wells have been flooded. About 1,200 wells and refinery installations on the north-eastern coastline are at risk. This and other coastal regions in the Caspian are among the most polluted areas in the former Soviet Union.

The trend might be cyclical. In the past, the Caspian was falling, much like the Aral Sea to the east. Old photographs of Baku show the shoreline much closer to the centre of the city. But the sea now is definitely rising relatively fast.

Russian archaeologists claim to have found ruins from the 1,000-year-old Khazar empire on the Caspian seabed. Geologists say the seabed might rise, judging by the mud volcanoes found in the bed's seismically active areas, giving way to springs of water.

One can see oily film on the sea's surface caused by drilling. Another problem is the flaring of gas in the sea - more than 4.5 MCM/day. Gas flares, however, can be contained with Western technology.

While the Caspian is less polluted than the Black Sea, much needs to be done to lessen the harmful environmental effects of oil drilling, and the potentially disastrous effects of the rising waters.

Oil was first found in Kazakhstan in 1899 and was first produced in 1911, in fields which now are being operated by the EmbaMunaiGaz production association. These, along with the older ones in Azerbaijan, were the focus of the Soviet Union's oil production until fields in western Siberia went on stream in the 1960s.

Kashagan, a huge oil and gas reservoir in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian in the north, is the biggest petroleum discovery in the world since the 1960s. Agip, the field's operator, said in June 2002 that Kashagan had 7-9 bn barrels of recoverable oil. However, the then Kazakh Energy Minister, Vladimir Shkolnik, told a London conference that Agip's estimate was conservative and that Kashagan's oil reserves could eventually reach 20 bn barrels. Kashagan will enable Kazakhstan to produce more than 3m b/d of crude oil before 2020. But this depends on finding export outlets for the oil and gas liquids.

Likewise, most of the oil and gas reserves in Azerbaijan lie offshore in the Caspian Sea. They will enable Azerbaijan, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, to produce up to 2m b/d of oil and 50 BCM/year of gas by 2020.