Pipeline Geopolitics: Subaquatic Materials and the Tactical Point Andrew Barry and Evelina Gambino Department of Geography, UCL, Gower St, London, WC1E 6BT a.uk Final accepted ms, forthcoming in Geopolitics, 2019 Abstract This paper starts from the proposition that studies of geopolitics need to address the political significance of spaces above and below the apparently two-dimensional or flat surface of the land and sea. However, we depart from the view that such spaces should be defined by their verticality or conceived as three-dimensional volumes. Instead, the argument stresses the importance of attending to the relations between physical and biological things, and the ways in which the proximity of things is both mediated and supplemented by legal, and scientific and political practice. The empirical focus of the paper is a specific geopolitical puzzle.
How did a short section of the route of a transnational gas pipeline, the 3500km Southern Gas Corridor, come to be a site or ‘tactical point’ at which the construction of the pipeline could be disrupted? Our contention is that any analysis of this political question must address not only the contested relations between states, corporations and civil society, but also the potential tension and interference between the horizontal networked geopolitics of pipelines and their subaquatic and subterranean construction. The subaquatic turns out not to be volume but a space of situated encounters between disparate materials. 1 Introduction Transnational oil and gas pipelines would appear to be a perfect manifestation of a horizontal vision of geopolitics. Indeed, the construction of such massive energy infrastructures seems to both embody and forge strategic connections, alliances and dependencies between states.
But while transnational pipelines are often conceived as horizontal networks, they are also frequently built underground. They are laid in trenches and tunnels, cutting underneath the surface of earth and sea. Once constructed they exist more or less invisibly, just beneath the surface or ‘visibly invisible’: invisible to the eye but intensely visible in the form of an archive of documents that are simultaneously expected to record and anticipate their environmental and social impact (Barry 2015). In this paper, we suggest that there is an unacknowledged tension between the horizontal ‘networked’ geopolitics and economy of pipelines, which is widely recognised, and their subterranean and subaquatic formation, which is not.
It may be easy to plot oil and gas pipeline routes in two dimensions on a map, and to imagine a transnational network as a connection between points. But pipeline construction also engages the presence of a range of subterranean and subaquatic things – including rock formations, aquifers and sources of mineral water, zones of earthquake and landslide risk, archaeological remains and marine species – with which pipelines co-exist. Rather than regard these subsurface things as merely incidental, we argue in this paper that there is a need to understand why, where and when subsurface materials acquire geopolitical consequence (Barry 2013, Valdivia 2015). These questions have become increasingly important in the context of wider debates about the relation between investments in new energy 2 infrastructures, including pipelines, and the politics of transition to a post-carbon economy.
Our argument is both empirical and conceptual. Empirically, we focus on the development of the Trans Adriatic gas Pipeline (TAP), which forms one element of the Southern Gas Corridor that is projected to run between the Caspian Sea and Southern Italy. We demonstrate why and how a short section of this pipeline route in Italy came to have remarkable geopolitical and economic significance: how, for a period of time, it became what we term a ‘tactical point’ in the network,1 a site in which the construction of the pipeline could be disrupted. Conceptually, the paper addresses the limitations of two ways of conceiving of the geopolitics of the subterranean and the subaquatic, and proposes a third approach.
On the one hand, we question the idea that the subsurface should be understood as a ‘volume’ that needs to be secured or occupied. We argue that a focus on ‘volume’ fails sufficiently to consider the relations between disparate materials – including, in this case, water, sand, concrete, steel and seagrass – which make up subsurface spaces.2 On the other hand, while our analysis stresses the geopolitical significance of subsurface materials and processes, we also depart from those approaches to materialism that fail to pay sufficient attention to political, scientific and legal practices, and to history. Our contention is that the subsurface can be understood as a space of dynamic relations and interferences between disparate materials that are increasingly supplemented and mediated by scientific practice and the law (Barry 2013: 183, Kama 2013). Through the case of the TAP in Southern Italy, we argue that it is both the presence of subsurface materials and their scientific and legal mediation that contribute to the constitution of a critical tactical point in the Southern Gas Corridor.
3 The Trans Adriatic Pipeline In March 2017 we attended a small rally in the Italian seaside resort of San Foca situated on the Adriatic coast south of Brindisi, approximately 25km from Lecce, in the municipality of Melendugno in the Salento. Behind the speakers lay a harbour full of small yachts, a 16th century guard tower, a tourist information kiosk, and a sheet covered with small leather items for sale. Some of the participants in the rally left to buy an ice cream on the other side of the coastal road, while others chatted on the sea front. This setting might seem an unlikely location for a geopolitical dispute.
Yet at the rally speakers demonstrated their opposition to the construction of the Trans Adriatic gas Pipeline (TAP), which is projected to run across northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic, before connecting to the Italian pipeline system near the village of Melendugno, a few kilometres inland from San Foca. The pipeline was planned to form the last stage of the Southern Gas Corridor along which gas is expected to flow directly from the Caspian Sea to Europe. Speakers at the San Foca rally told those present about the relations between the Italian state and the south, the authoritarianism of Azerbaijan, the attachment of local people to their land, the role of the European Investment Bank in the TAP project, the declining demand for gas in Italy, and the importance of tourism to the region’s economy. One of the leaders of NoTAP, the coalition of mainly local groups that opposed the construction of the pipeline in the municipality, suggested that the struggle had reached a critical moment.
NoTAP posters, flags and graffiti were scattered across San Foca and neighbouring villages, while approximately 2km inland a small 4 occupation of an ancient olive grove had occurred near the projected route of the pipeline. Widely reported in the national press, images of wrapped olive trees waiting to be removed in order to make it possible to begin construction, enclosed by security fences, made a striking contrast to the image of the small camp of protestors. During the rally, speakers advised those who could to support the occupation over the coming days.3 Fig 1: Wrapped olive trees, in the vicinity of Melendugno, April 2017, photo: Andrew Barry. 5 Fig 2: Route of the Southern Gas Corridor, including TAP, drawing by Miles Irving, Department of Geography, UCL.
One of the reasons that the construction of the pipeline should be prevented, according to many of its opponents, was that it would impact negatively on typical features of the traditional landscape of the Salento, including olive trees and dry stone walls (TAP 2014c). But as we will show, while the construction of the pipeline underneath the olive grove of Melendugno came to be the focus for both the mass media and the occupation, it is not possible to understand why San Foca, in particular, became so geopolitically significant without also considering the subaquatic construction of the pipeline including its proximity to meadows of seagrass that are to be found offshore along the Adriatic coast. The TAP was projected to become the final element of a 3500km pipeline system that, when complete, would also include the Trans Anatolian Pipeline across Turkey and the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) across Azerbaijan and Georgia. According to its proponents, the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor would help address a 6 geoeconomic problem that had become apparent during the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute of 2009, which saw the suspension of Russian gas exports to Europe (Pirani et al 2009, European Parliament 2009, Bosse 2011, Bouzarovski et al 2015, Siddi 2017, Wilson 2014).
The pipeline would thus, it was claimed, make a contribution both to the maintenance of energy security and to the consolidation of a competitive European gas market (TAP 2014b, 9), while also enabling the transition from a carbon to a post-carbon economy. All of these claims about TAP’s strategic significance can be contested, and indeed were contested by the members of NoTAP. More broadly, as Kärg Kama (2016, 833) has argued, the concept of ‘energy security’ is both dynamic and multi-faceted, while ‘transition represents a highly contextual and contested process’, as it was in the case of TAP. Nonetheless, a month prior to the rally on San Foca beach, the Vice- President of the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, had formulated this bold vision of the future, anticipating the effects of the Southern Gas Corridor at a ministerial meeting in Baku:4 By 2020, we will have gas flowing through the Southern Gas Corridor to Europe, further diversifying our energy supplies.
Building the Energy Union is not an end in itself. It is a huge modernisation programme for Europe, benefiting young Europeans, entrepreneurs and mayors across the continent (European Commission 2017). In early 2017, the controversy centred on Melendugno had become an unexpected obstacle to these wider strategic ambitions. Press reports of the ministerial meeting in Baku at which Šefčovič spoke noted that the progress of the project along the short section of the route between San Foca and Melendugno had been slow.
This delay 7 potentially posed a problem for TAP’s investors as contracts had already been signed for the delivery of gas in 2020. Moreover, the EU had granted TAP an exemption from a requirement to give third party access to the pipeline, but this exemption could expire, thus undermining the financial viability of the project (European Commission 2015, see also Makholm 2012). Given this timescale, the Italian government felt the need to reassure both the Azerbaijan government and international investors that the project would be delivered on time and that the opposition to the project manifest in San Foca would be overcome. Thus, according to a Reuters report in February 2017, “Italian Industry Minister Carlo Calenda [had] said that work to clear a major hurdle to establishing TAP’s landing point in southern Italy – a grove of more than 200 ancient olive trees – would begin on Monday” (Reuters 2017, our emphasis, see also Shiriyev 2017).
While speakers at the San Foca rally spoke critically about Azerbaijan, participants at the ministerial meeting in Baku were equally aware of the significance of Melendugno and the obstacle that it potentially posed to the ministers’ desire to complete the project on schedule. Shortly after the March rally on the San Foca seafront, a heavy police presence enabled the company to clear the remaining olive groves, thereby making it possible for construction work to begin.5 Michael Watts has argued that “what is distinctive about oil is that there are certain tactical points for holding up the supply of oil” (Watts 2004, 53, see also Mitchell 2011). Here we focus on gas rather than oil, and the construction of infrastructure rather than supply; but the concept of the tactical point remains a useful one and we develop it further here. It suggests that certain key locations have a greater potential to become tactical points than others, and that the disruption of oil and gas infrastructures does not occur everywhere but is highly localised.