Current Problems of Global Energy Security : In Light of the Caspian Sea Region’s Recent Experience

What has made it possible for energy development to succeed today in the Caspian Sea basin is the qualitatively new phenomenon of strategic alliances among industry leaders. This phenomenon has emerged from the need to coordinate the incredibly complex engineering tasks combining economic, political and social elements in a manner impossible to disentangle. Strategic alliances between firms allow profound knowledge of the market to be combined with the best technical practices. To be successful they must share goals, risk, control and decision making, through clearly defined processes. This concept of “strategic alliance” also describes, in the political realm, the traditional relationship conceived in democratic theory between a civil society and its government. Cooperative energy security is an empirical category of analysis that has normative content. It motivates a rapprochement between the international energy agenda and the international environmental agenda, resonating with studies of multilateralism and learning. Its three necessary components are the guarantee of secure transport, an investment-friendly financial climate, and political stability. These components represent transparencies of the three classical economic factors of production: land, capital, and labor. The paper summarizes what companies, governments, and publics have learned from Caspian Sea energy development, and it enumerates issues requiring cooperation among those parties, including issues requiring a tripartite “strategic alliance” including the publics