Роль проектов российских нефтегазовых компаний в реализации идеи «Большого Евразийского Партнерства» в современной мировой политике

The size and geographical position make Russia a link between Europe and Asia. Based on her contribution to world culture and interfaith dialogue, history, the unique experience of building various economic structures, and the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, she wants to play a constructive unifying role in Eurasia. The sources of its philosophical, political and cultural justification can be found in the positive part of the ideologies of classical and modern Eurasianism. In order for Moscow to take it upon itself, as the leaders of the Russian expert community substantiate, the necessary prerequisites have arisen. Centripetal trends prevailed everywhere. The era of individualism and isolation is passing. The craving for integration and regionalization is growing. Supporting international organizations have been created with the participation of Russia, China, India and Kazakhstan. They add in influence. The cooperation of the participating countries paves the way for the implementation of the Greater Eurasia project.
The approach that has been chosen for the nascent integration processes is healthy conservatism; in this case, it means cooperation while respecting the rule of law and what the states agreed upon, creating a modern world order, it is upheld by Russia, China, and other BRICS participants. They proceed from the fact that the Charter of the World Security Organization, which sanctifies non-interference in internal affairs and the sovereign equality of states, must be strictly observed. Actions bypassing the UN Security Council are unacceptable. Any coercive measures can be introduced only on the basis of its decisions. Nobody should encroach on the right of peoples to determine the trajectory of their movement towards freedom and a fair government. To sacrifice their destinies, to abstract speculative ideals is criminal and impermissible. Russia is guided by this approach, building its development assistance policy. It is the basis of the Eurasian geopolitical project.
Only an unconditional positive balance could encourage the founding
countries to create a Customs Union and Common Economic Space, and then force 3
their transformation into the EAEU. As soon as possible, the EAEU and the member states concluded a pioneer agreement on a free trade zone with Vietnam, the most dynamically developing country in Southeast Asia. And this construct was built despite the economic downturn in Russia and the ongoing sanctions war.
Naturally, idealizing cooperation within the EAEU is not the goal of this work. Obviously, when launching a new large-scale integration project, a large number of structural problems have to be overcome. They are connected with the already deep-rooted habit of primarily focusing on the promotion of own national interests, the different state and level of development of economic mechanisms, and intense competition between various groups of lobbyists. They are overlaid with another set of problems: instability of national currencies, falling prices for goods and services of traditional exports, market volatility, deterioration of relations with external partners, etc. However, the point is not the severity of individual problems, but the participants’ systematic assessment of the overall balance of pros and cons.
Since the time of the 1990s, the leadership of Kazakhstan has become the most authoritative lobbyist of the economic union between the countries that emerged on the territory of the former USSR. The leading and most authoritative theorist of the inevitability of integration in the vastness of Eurasia was the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. He has built the bridge between classical Eurasianism and modernity. He took from Eurasianism the tremendous positive political charge contained in it. He did a lot to understand how closely the peoples of Eurasia are interconnected. He substantiated that their rapprochement and integration within the framework of a common integration project is objective. He proposed a concrete vision of how it should be implemented [45].
However, until the beginning of the 2010s, the prerequisites necessary for the success of an ambitious Eurasian project were absent. Centrifugal tendencies dominated the former USSR. Even the Union State created by Russia and Belarus remained for them mainly on paper. The Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) provided, rather, a “civilized divorce” of parts of the once united country, 4

rather than deepening cooperation between them. According to a wide circle of researchers, such an image best describes the situation prevailing at that time. It is resorted to, among other things, by Corey Welt and Henry Hale of George Washington University in the preface to one of the most systematic recent work on the challenges that Eurasia is facing [11]. They write: the CIS “served as a more stringent divorce mechanism than the basis for new forms of integration” [11].
Departing from classical forms of Eurasian integration the Russian political, entrepreneurial and intellectual elite started to look from a multipolar viewpoint of the world. It began to build equal, close, friendly relations with the leading rising powers of the planet and the corresponding regions – China, India, Brazil, South Africa. Russia relied on coordinating its conditions with them with regard to economic construction and foreign policy. Thus, the Russian-Chinese-Indian consultative mechanism and the BRICS were born.
From an abstract conjuncture scheme invented by scientists, BRICS has become one of the supporting international structures of the modern world, which has a growing influence on global processes. Within its framework, dozens of dialogues have been established at all levels, including regular meetings of industry ministers. Opportunities are widely used for consultations and reconciliations on the eve of and on the sidelines of international forums and meetings of bodies of international organizations of a wide composition. BRICS is especially active in the financial field. The BRICS summits give a great impetus to coordinating positions on key issues on the world agenda and building up practical cooperation.
SCO is another supporting organization, on which not only its members, but also neighboring countries have high hopes. One of the most important topics within is to combine the large-scale Chinese program for the economic revival of the Silk Road and the activities of the EAEU. Chinese commentators wrote about it as shaping a new reality in Asia [64]. It was rated as a breakthrough by the Russian expert community. In their opinion, it creates a political basis for the integration of integrations across Eurasia [86].
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The unification of the potentials of China and the EAEU for the implementation of large projects has a great future. Now the economic centers of attraction for Asian countries are the second and third economies of the world – China and Japan. If the current trends of the fast and dynamic formation of the EAEU continue, the new integration association will most likely join them.
In order to reinforce positive role that it could play in Eurasia Russia is ready to actively contribute to pooling efforts not only in the economic field, but also in soft and hard security. This is a joint fight against drug trafficking, organized crime, smuggling of migrants and refugees, money laundering. One of the initiatives also includes the formation and strengthening of an anti-terrorist front. The creation of a full-fledged collective security system is an end goal, one of the guarantors of which Russia could become.
Another extremely important resource that Russia could share with the countries and peoples of the superregion is energy. In this area, Moscow is a recognized leader. A large-scale construction of the most advanced nuclear power plants and a stable supply of hydrocarbons – this is what everyone needs. Taking into account the acuteness of the problem of energy security, the influence of Russia, which has huge oil and gas reserves [20] and built infrastructure of energy supplies, in this sector becomes obvious. Impact of Russian gas and oil projects in the region on the Greater Eurasia is the central focus of the study. At the moment this topic is not researched enough. As Alexey Masterpanov, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, head of the Analytical Center for Energy Policy and Security of the Institute of Oil and Gas Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Energy Strategy, notes on the current most influential work in the field of Greater Eurasia studies, the report of the Valdai International Discussion Club “Towards the Great Ocean – 5: From Turn to the East to Greater Eurasia”, “While supporting in general the idea of Greater Eurasia and agreeing with the proposed principles, goals and objectives of its formation, it should, however, be said that one of the most
important problems of our time – the problem of ensuring energy security – has 6

remained outside of their framework.” [41] This empty tile has to be filled, however the research does pretend to completely cover the whole section, as there are a lot of themes that could potentially be discussed. Instead it concentrates on the “Russia’s play in this game”, building up a research base for the further development of the Greater Eurasia studies in this field. For the purpose of this research it was chosen to identify Greater Eurasian Partnership as Greater Eurasia and do not go into deep analysis of integration processes of organizations and initiatives within the framework as it is a topic that could possibly distract the work from its focus and most likely both would stay not covered enough being limited by the volume of the paper.
Novelty of the study is in the approach that was taken. Of course, there are a lot of respectable studies on Russian energy politics. The latest paper that was found during literature revision is “Russia’s Energy Politics and Its Relevance for the European Union” by Mark Pierini [72], a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, which focus was mainly, on the EU-Russian partnership and points of pressure in this industry. Other sources were rather outdated and did not cover the current state of affairs in the topic [16] [68]. The research takes out the Russian oil and gas exports from the common economic and classical political framework of the pressure instrument and puts it into the comparably new Greater Eurasia one as a bridge for cooperation.
The significance of the research is in its potentiality to become first in the chain for Greater Eurasian studies and create a basis for further developments in this direction of thinking through works of scholars which will take this paper as a start point of their own research. Greater Eurasia project needs as many background scientific works as possible at the current state. This one provides the analysis of a portion of Greater Eurasia energy security issue – the Russian gas and oil projects and their impact on the idea.
The problem of the study: what role does Russian oil and gas companies’ projects play in the implantation of the idea of Greater Eurasia?
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The goal of the study is to identify the possible influence of Russian hydrocarbon exporting firms’ projects (specifying: oil and gas only) on the Greater Eurasia venture.
To achieve the set goal it is necessary to complete a number of objectives:
1. To conduct an analysis of the frame where the research is put – Greater Eurasia concept.
2. To highlight the potential projects-influencers within the set framework.
3. To analyze the possibility of impact on the feasibility of the Greater Eurasia concept.
The object of the study is the projects of Russian oil and gas companies within Greater Eurasian Partnership frame.
The subject of the study is the impact that Russian oil and gas companies have on the feasibility of the Greater Eurasian Partnership.
Research hypothesis – the success or fail of Russian oil and gas companies’ have direct effect on the implementation of Greater Eurasia concept.
The study on the Greater Eurasia is based of works of a great amount of authors both Russian and foreign to not fall into idealization of the concept from one side and baseless critique from another. Especially valuable for the research were works of Russian authors: S. Karaganov, A. Masterpanov, Yu. Shafranik, T. Bordachev, D. Trenin, S. Luzyanin and A. Lukin.
The works of foreign authors brought new interesting perspectives on the researched topics. Particularly insightful were papers of B. Maçães, M. Kaczmarski, Cl. Mandil and B.Lo.
The included in the study statistical data which helped to highlight certain aspects of the world gas and oil trade tendencies was provided by the reports of BP, EIA and OPEC.
For the purpose of research various data from electronic sources was used. Main sources of information on gas and oil projects are official webpages of Gazprom and Transneft. Online news sources, such as RIA, RG and Regnum
helped to enrich the research with fresh facts. 8

The theoretical basis of the research was the works and concepts formed in the works of domestic and foreign researchers and devoted to the ideas of Greater Eurasia.
The methodology that was used in the study includes scientific abstraction, analysis, deduction, forecasting and economic and statistical analysis methods.