Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/812895
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 19 APRIL 2017 News 6 Matthew Vella Caspian gas and civil society SOCAR will power Maltese homes. To imprisoned political leader Ilgar Mammadov, fossil fuel extraction makes him and other Azerbaijani political prisoners hostages to the Aliyev regime In international relations, Malta is a price-taker. Lawrence Gonzi hugged Mua- mmar Gaddafi. Before him, Gaddafi left both Eddie Fenech Adami and Dom Mintoff wait- ing before the tardy start of con- vivial talks. Nobody gets to pick their neighbours. And in energy matters, the capricious geogra- phy of fossil fuels means human rights often come in second to energy needs: most of the fuels we buy outside the EU will hail from a country dominated by political strongmen, oligarchs and dictators. The new 200MW gas plant nearing completion in Delima- ra will be run by a consortium that includes SOCAR, the Azer- baijan state oil company, as an equal partner. Its vice-president Elshad Nassirov visited Malta this week together with foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov; before him, CEO Rovnag Ab- dullayev paid Joseph Muscat a visit in his role as president of the Azeri FA, during a match his national team played against Malta. SOCAR sponsors the na- tional team of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is a nation built on the riches of its Caspian Sea resources, and gas and oil are a mainstay of an economy that is over-dependent on fossil fuels and not diversified enough to foster a competitive environ- ment that benefits all – and not just the rent-seeking elite that controls the energy industry. But Azerbaijan's gas is espe- cially important to the European Union member states who want to reduce dependency on Rus- sian resources. The key to this is the Southern Gas Corridor, a $45 billion project that will transport gas from Shah Deniz 2, through three pipelines to Georgia (South Caucasus Pipe- line), Turkey (Trans Anatolian Pipeline) and into Greece and Italy (Trans Adriatic Pipeline). The potential for Malta is that the Italian gas transmission net- work expands to the island itself, with further connection to gas networks into Western Europe. While this project would pro- vide Europe with up to 10% of its energy needs, at home Azerbai- jan president Ilham Aliyev uses oil and gas to keep the country's economy exclusively dependant on these resources and nothing else. "Aliyev has been trying to pre- sent the SGC as his generous gift to the west so that governments will not talk about human rights and democracy in Azerbaijan," wrote Ilgar Mammadov in a pub- lic January 2017 letter. Mamma- dow is an Azerbaijani leader of the opposition Republican Al- ternative (REAL) movement who has been arrested since March 2013 on trumped-up charges be- fore the presidential elections. In his letter he called himself "an inmate of the Southern Gas Corridor." The European Court of Hu- man Rights (ECHR) has already established that Mammadov's arrest was the wish of the au- thorities "to silence him" for criticising the government; a European Parliament resolution has called for his immediate and unconditional release; and since December 2014, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted nine resolutions and decisions specifically on his case, insisting on his urgent release in line with the ECHR judgment. "Since 2013, Aliyev has insti- gated an unprecedented wave of attacks on civil society, which he used to illustrate the seriousness of his ambition for energy coop- eration with the west," Mam- madli says. When falling oil prices hit Azerbaijan hard, the Caspian nation found itself unable to fund its share in the TANAP and TAP pipelines without loans from the European Bank for Re- construction and Development, European Investment Bank, World Bank and Asian Develop- ment Bank. But in 2016, these institutions said their backing was subject to Azerbaijan's compliance with the Extractive Industry Trans- parency Initiative (EITI) – a collection of 51 states that tie energy transparency to good governance. In September 2016, Riccardo Puliti, director on en- ergy and natural resources at the EBRD, cited the resumption of the suspended EITI membership of Azerbaijan as "the main fac- tor" for the prospect of approval of funds for TANAP/TAP. Quitting the EITI The EITI is a global govern- ment initiative that also in- cludes international civil society organisations, which verif y the amount of natural resources ex- tracted by corporations and how much of the latters' revenue is shared with host states: "Its pur- pose is to safeguard transnation- al businesses from future claims that they have ransacked a de- veloping nation – for instance, by sponsoring a political regime unfriendly to civil society and principle freedoms," Mamma- dov says. Amid Aliyev's crackdown on civil society after the 2013 presi- dential elections, the EITI board lowered the status of Azerbaijan from "member" to "candidate" in 2015, further complicating funding for the Southern Gas Corridor. Mammadli, a member of the EITI's civil society segment be- fore his 2013 arrest, was allowed to make an appeal to the EITI board as it convened to discuss the country's status. The on- slaught by civil society partners during the 25 October debate saw the EITI Board refusing to return Azerbaijan its "member" status. In March, in assessing the vali- dation of Azerbaijan, the EITI board said the country had not made "satisfactory progress" on civil society engagement, and corrective actions it had pro- posed had not been fully com- pleted. So Azerbaijan withdrew from the EITI. But still, it does not appear any time soon that the exigencies of Europe's energy se- curity will come second to gov- ernance issues, as the important pipelines are likely to get devel- opment bank funding any way. As Thomas de Waal, senior fel- low of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes, the idea that drove the founders of the EITI in 2003 was a pledge to make their transactions and sources of wealth transparent. With the Caspian petrostate now quitting the EITI just as the groundwork for the gas corri- dor starts, it is clear that Aliyev Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov in a meeting with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat earlier this week Malta's demand for gas is miniscule in the framework of Europe's energy needs, with policy decisions here hardly registered on the radar of Azerbaijani policy let alone strong enough to influence its human rights record