SAVE THE CASPIAN SEA

Every year, 12 August is marked as an international Caspian Sea Day, the day of coming into effect of the Framework Convention on the Caspian Sea Maritime Environment Protection (the Teheran Convention), which regrettably remains a declaratory document. The Caspian Sea is a unique water body which littoral zone provides residence for more than five million people. Today it requires our utmost consideration and urgent interference.  The biggest lake in the world, especially its northern part is a natural habitat for more than 90% of the world population of sturgeon and many unique animals (like a Caspian seal), and the most important part of the migrant birds’ routes. However, the water mass of the shallow northern part of the Caspian Sea does not exceed 400 cubic kilometers but it is exactly the place where the vast majority of bioresources can be found. It is 200 times less than the water mass of the entire Caspian Sea – which is about 80 000 cubic kilometers.

                           On 23 September 1968, the USSR Council of Ministers passed a government regulation “On declaring the northern part of the Caspian Sea including the Volga and the Ural deltas a ‘conservation area’ with the permission to develop only fish industry and water transport in this area in the future”.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1993 independent Kazakhstan under the pressure of the western oil lobby gave the consortium of foreign companies led by ExxonMobil a permission to provide oil exploration on the Caspian shelf. The contract worth of 136 billion US dollars was signed on terms of product-sharing agreement, i.e. the oil produced is supposed first to cover the consortium project expenses. Taking into account current oil prices, this will drag on for decades. Today the profit gained from fishery is a serious revenue item for the Caspian Sea countries, besides, the industry provides jobs for thousands of fishers. The value of the renewable North Caspian bioresources in the long-term period income will be immeasurably bigger than production of fossils can yield!

            Drilling in shallow waters (1-5 meters), at abrupt temperature fluctuation (down to minus 30), at a depth of 3-4 thousand meters is  a technologically complicated task. If to add to this high oil pressure, seismicity of the region, and what is most important, high content of toxic hydrogen sulfide, sulfur and mercaptan, nobody can guarantee avoiding an ecological catastrophe. That is why none of the insurance companies decided to insure the project. The consortium itself speeds up the oil production time, not concerned about the measures designed to prevent a catastrophe. For example, the rapid response operations base for oil spills has not yet been built, though drilling activity has been provided since August 1999 Given the lack of preventive measures against oil spills any oil operations on the Caspian Sea must be viewed as a crime against humanity because the consequences of possible Mexican Gulf style catastrophe will hit not only the five Caspian countries but the entire ecosystem of the planet!

   The projected annual oil production volume of 50 million tons only in the Kazakhstan sector of the Caspian Sea in view of possible oil spills lead to unavoidable destruction of this unique water body. Today, at the exploration stage the activity of oil companies has led to drastic decrease of sturgeon population (now it is 20 times less compared to 1990), there are a lot of documented evidence of mass death cases of Caspian seals and birds. In spite of the protests of local population the consortium is set to produce the crude by the end of 2012. The time is running out, let us help to save the Caspian Sea!

We demand the introduction of a moratorium on further exploration and production of hydrocarbons throughout the North of the Caspian Sea!