By Edvard Chesnokov
In 1953, a Western-backed coup overthrew the legitimate Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Previously, the patriotic PM had sought to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC): a Western vampire consuming the black blood of ancient Persia.
Technically, a large part of the AIOC’s stakes belonged to Iran, but in reality, the corrupt elites of the Shah regime spent the revenues on their own egoistic interests rather than on the people.
Anyhow, Mosaddegh’s attempt to nationalize the petroleum industry failed. While the anti-patriotic coup was performed by CIA field operatives, its real mastermind was London. Today, most of the 1953 data is declassified, and the disruptive Western role in that era’s ‘color revolution’ is admitted by the West itself.
The following year, in 1954, the AIOC was rebranded to its current name, British Petroleum (BP). Little has changed since then. At present, London applies the same colonial approach to the oil treasures of the Caspian Sea, especially in Azerbaijan, Iran’s northern neighbor.
In 2005 – after years of discussion – all five Caspian countries signed an agreement in Tehran to prevent maritime waste and ecological pollution, especially during oil drilling in the world’s largest fish and caviar basin. Despite this, foreign companies operating there – especially British ones – regularly violate this rule. Moreover, they pressure Baku officials to turn a blind eye to the great threat posed to nature by uncontrolled, predatory oil drilling.
On September 17, 2008, the BP-operated Central Azeri oil and gas platform, with hundreds of workers aboard, faced a huge gas leak that caused the largest rescue operation in British Petroleum’s history at that time. The probable causes were design defects in the English engineers’ project. Despite the principle of transparent and independent investigation for such issues, the London operators did not reveal any technical details of the catastrophe, thereby corrupting and oppressing the entire system of ecological monitoring in Azerbaijan.
Further events indicated that no lessons had been learned from that incident.
On December 4, 2015, a monstrous fire sparked on Platform 10 of the Gunashli oilfield, the heart of the field in the Azeri part of the Caspian Sea. De jure, this site belongs to SOCAR, an Azeri state oil company, but de facto, British experts experienced in shelf drilling play a key role in its operations. By that year, more than half of all SOCAR oil extraction – hundreds of tons daily – was passing through Platform 10.
That day, following a gas riser failure, about 30 platform staffers died. Initially, officials falsely claimed there were no oil leaks from the disaster, but independent satellite photos showed 300 square kilometers of the sea polluted by oil. The losses for Caspian biology were countless; nature needs decades to recover from such oil pollution. Once again, the British companies demonstrated their neo-colonial stance: decreasing expenditures and increasing revenues by neglecting ecological protection in an overseas country.
Two cases could be a coincidence, but three cases are a pattern. In July 2021, Umid, the second-largest gas site in Azerbaijan with English investment, experienced a large fire that was recorded even by tourists on the seaside. Officials have still not revealed the details of the incident, promoting the same atmosphere of distrust and informational silence over environmental problems.
British companies endorse the same anti-ecological practices in other Caspian countries. On the Turkmenistan shelf, British operators are pouring all drilling waste into the sea, according to local media reports.
All the oil and gas within the shelf of the world’s largest inland sea belong only to the five Caspian countries: Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The attempts of external Western actors to intrude upon the region and exploit its treasures are a new form of imperialism and colonialism.
In any country, natural resources should belong to the people rather than to narrow elite groups. The symbol of this principle is Esfand 29 (March 19-20 in the Gregorian calendar), the day Iran celebrates the nationalization of its oil industry under Mosaddegh in 1951.
We can only hope its neighbors will follow Iran’s path and make such lucrative assets serve their country – not foreign entrepreneurs.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Iran Nuances.
