To date, the curtains for two "energy summits" on the construction of oil and gas pipelines in the Caspian Sea area have fallen simultaneously. Russian President Vladimir Putin successfully visited Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan reached a landmark pipeline deal. In the meanwhile, the informal energy summit of the presidents of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan and the presidential representative of Kazakhstan announced the formation of an energy-issue international working group. This is by no means a coincidence of two "energy summits" but the direct confrontation on the current geopolitical and geo-economical map.

On the one hand, Russia has exerted its utmost for the control of the direction of energy flows in Central Asia region. The Central Asia-Caspian Sea area represents an energy base of a great potential with the reserves of 32.8 billion tons of oil and 18 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. For historical reasons, the area has, however, to "hire" Russian pipelines and so Russia has long been in a position of monopolizing the outward energy resources transport. After winning their independence, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and a few other Central Asian nations increased both oil output and export volume, and began to cooperate with other nations in building new pipelines.

During his recent visit, Putin first agreed to help Kazakhstan develop its nuclear energy for it has long aspired to import Russia's nuclear technology for the solution of its energy issue. Then, Putin expressed his readiness to support Turkmenistan with respect to the Caspian Sea demarcation issue, as the country hinges mainly on offshore oil exploration for its energy needs, and it has been facing disputes with Azerbaijan and Iran on the Caspian Sea, and hopes that Russia would be "fair" or "evenhanded" to cope with the problem. So Russia is prepared to capitalize on its economical and political input to maintain its special right in the central Asia energy sphere.

On the other hand, the United States and the EU nations have strongly advocated extending the construction of the "transport corridor" that originally connected the Black and the Adriatic seas. The EU hopes to increase the oil and natural gas imports from Central Asia but not to be controlled by Russia, and the new pipeline they maintained to lay is aimed precisely to help the region become the "competitor" of Russia. At the spur of both the EU and the U.S., the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil Pipeline was officially inaugurated on May 31, 2005, in a bid to do away with the monopoly by Russia.

Moreover, The EU and the U.S. have proposed laying the seabed trans-Caspian Sea pipeline.

At the time when Russia kept intensifying its energy "weapon" to contend with the Western world, Ukraine, Georgia and other nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States (or CIS) shifted to seek the backing of the West for the fear that they might be turned into the energy vassal states of Russia. The five Eurasian nations that had partaken in the energy summit almost all pursued an anti-Russian stance, and the energy summit was designed to help the EU and the U.S. to drag the Central Asian nations to Russia's opposite side.

In view of the present situation, Russia has gained an initiative from its Western competitors, and this is precisely because the EU needs its energy resources. In the meanwhile, the United States has been bogged down into the swamp of the Iraqi war and cannot make a bigger input in the region.

More important, the economy of Central Asia has entered into a new era of making spheres other than the oil-gas sector as an emphasis of investment. And Russia has actively been adjusting its strategy and making itself an external force to be well received.

Consequently, most Central Asia nations have adopted a very pragmatic, substantial attitude, meeting Russia's demands on the one hand and go on cooperating with the Western nations on the other hand to prepare for laying a couple of pipelines leading to the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. It can be foreseen that Russia's cooperation with Central Asia nations in the energy sphere would not be a plain-sailing in the years ahead nevertheless. Russia and the Western world will be at loggerheads, looked in both open and hidden strifes, as the latter controls the development right of most oilfields in the Caspian Sea area with much more capital for development.