Kazakhstan will consider pumping its oil through Russian pipelines as an alternative to shipping via tanker to Azerbaijan for transport through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, Turkish daily Referans reported Aug. 21. Kazakhstan currently ships up to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) via tanker across the Caspian Sea to the BTC, filling half the capacity of that pipeline. According to STRATFOR sources in the region, the move could be an initial indication of a larger decision by Kazakhstan to give up on the BTC altogether. It therefore seems that Kazakhstan is choosing to reorient its energy toward Russia, at least in the short term. Alternatives to Russia — particularly China — will still be available, but the hope to diversify energy shipments via the Georgian corridor toward the Western markets appears to be dashed. Russia's resurgence in its periphery — most prominently brought into focus by the intervention in Georgia following Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, but by no means limited to that event — has led to a cascade of reassessments by former Soviet republics and Russia's close neighbors and regional rivals. Of the former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan is probably the most exposed to Russia; a third of the Kazakh population is ethnically Russian, and large population centers in the country are easily within the Russian military's reach. There is also a large Kazakh population that works in Russia and sends a lot of remittances back to Kazakhstan. Furthermore, there are no natural barriers between the flat Kazakhstan and Russia, and most Kazakh infrastructure is hooked into old Soviet routes — particularly in the energy sector but also the general transportation networks. In terms of security, Kazakhstan — and Central Asia as a whole — has never seriously flirted with the West. It has never sought membership in NATO, unlike Georgia and Ukraine, and has always understood that Russia is its main security partner in the region. This is because of Kazakhstan's vulnerability to Russia, and because simple geography puts Kazakhstan too far from any significant Western influence, with its fellow Central Asian republics to the south (and Iran and Pakistan beyond them) and the Caspian Sea and the Russian-controlled Volga region to the west. (click image to enlarge) However, Astana had hoped to diversify its infrastructure away from Moscow. The BTC pipeline was at the heart of this plan because it allowed Kazakhstan to ship oil across the Caspian Sea to Baku. The plan was for Kazakhstan to use the tankers to establish itself as a competent and reliable supplier for the BTC so that when the planned Aktau-Baku pipeline comes online in 2011, Astana will already have a good relationship with the BTC consortium. However, with Russia's presence in Georgia — and the accompanying control over Georgia's energy structure for the foreseeable future — the BTC is no longer a real alternative. And the Aktau-Baku pipeline, which would have been a 440-mile underwater pipeline spanning the Caspian Sea and would have taken three years and $3 million to build, was already an ambitious project. Now, there is the added problem that all the money would essentially be spent to build another pipeline that, at the end of the day, is at the Kremlin's mercy. Kazakhstan, therefore, has a short span of time in which it must essentially decide whether to continue its diversification of energy routes. Since the Aktau-Baku pipeline project is still in its infancy, it will be simple enough to pull the plug on it in the next few months, before a lot of money is sunk to the bottom of the Caspian. Furthermore, considering that most of the funds for the pipeline were from foreign direct investment, it is doubly easy for Kazakhstan to walk away from the project; none of its own money is on the line. The fact that Astana is reconsidering sending tankers to Baku to fill the BTC is clear enough of an indication that Kazakhstan has already made up its mind. Russia is resurgent, and Astana's option of sending its energy to the West on its own, rather than via Russian-controlled routes, has now disappeared. Kazakhstan does, however, still have the option of a closer energy relationship with China. Since the westward route for Kazakh energy is curtailed, it is in Astana's interest to make sure that it can at least retain the China option and that the infrastructure being developed to send more energy supplies to China is completed and expanded. Kazakhstan currently sends 200,000 bpd of oil via refurbished Soviet era oil pipelines to China and plans to expand that capacity eventually to 1 million bpd. Also, a portion of the planned natural gas pipeline that will take up to half of Turkmenistan's export capacity — 30 billion cubic meters a year — traverses the southeastern corner of Kazakhstan. Finally, China is developing increased railway links to Kazakhstan in an effort to boost nonenergy trade as well. The flip side of the Russian resurgence is that the Kremlin will, at least for the short term, need to maintain a cordial relationship with China, as its moves in Georgia and Eastern Europe are likely to bring about a U.S. response — particularly once the United States extracts itself from the Middle East. The last thing the Kremlin will need then is another Nixon-esque rapprochement between Washington and Beijing. It is therefore not impossible that Moscow could acquiesce to a deal in which China and Russia share the energy spoils of Central Asia. The extent to which such a deal would hold up over time is, of course, a different question. Russia and China became competitors even during the Cold War when both saw the United States as a threat. Once the Soviet security situation regarding the West became more concrete and relatively stabilized on the NATO-Warsaw Pact frontier, the Kremlin felt no need to refrain from competing with China. Despite this long-term threat, China needs to diversify its energy imports away from the current oceanic route, which is extremely vulnerable to U.S. sea power. It is therefore going to keep its investments in Central Asia and Kazakhstan going strong even though those assets could face a long-term vulnerability to Russian belligerence. Nevertheless, even if Russia at some point decided to turn its attention to Central Asia and take back the control over infrastructure there, China would feel that it still had a greater chance of maintaining influence over land-based routes near its border than staring down the U.S. Navy over the control of the oceans.