Located between the east of the Caucasus Mountains and the west of the steppe of Central Asia, this sea represents a surface of 372,000 sq km (larger than Italy, Poland or the United Kingdom), is 1200 km long and has a width of 320 km. The Caspian Sea is bordered by five countries: Russia (northwest, 142 million inhabitants), Kazakhstan (northeast, 15 million inhabitants), Turkmenistan (southeast, 5 million inhabitants), Iran (south, 71 million inhabitants), Azerbaijan (southwest, 8.5 million inhabitants). Countries bordering the Caspian Sea, with the exception of Iran, are all members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) created just after the collapse of the Soviet Union (December 1991).

The Caspian region emerged geopolitically after the end of Cold War and started to raise international attention and competition from both major state and non-state actors for the control of its huge energy sources. The Caspian Sea is indeed located along the line of the largest series of existing oil and gas reserves extending from the Caucasus to the Middle East. Furthermore, the existence of additional oil fields in other Central Asian countries (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) tends to profile, in terms of potential wealth, these newly independent states as the 'Emirates of the 21st century'. However from the end of the communist era until the 'war on terror', populations of the Central Asia region (in majority-Muslim countries ruled by pro-Western political regimes) are far from having benefited of any economic prosperity.

If the Commonwealth of Independent States was thought as the political entity from where the Russian Federation could exert its sphere of influence on the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea, the United States on the other hand sought to immediately counter this Russian domination by affirming that the Caspian region was ranked among 'its national strategic interests'.

During the same immediate post-Cold War period, major Western oil companies such as Chevron and British Petroleum started to invest in the extraction but also in the transportation of energy resources. Pipeline transportation of oil and gas to European and Asian markets was and remains

until now the principal concern of the Caspian region. Different routes for oil and gas have been envisaged during the last fifteen years to provide Caspian oil and gas to the rest of the world. Energy of the Caspian region is particularly attractive for Asian consuming countries of the size of India, China, Japan and South Korea.

As the needs from the developed and the developing world are constantly increasing, the main consuming countries are pursuing an energy policy that favors expansion and diversification of both oil/gas sources and routes. Regarding the energy supply, alternatives sources of oil and gas are actively sought in order to make energy markets less sensitive to the ups and downs in potential insecure regions such as the Middle East. Regarding the energy routes of Central Asia, as long as the producing countries are dependent on the Russian control of the existing pipelines, the perspective of an abundant and accessible Caspian oil and gas remains a long term objective.

All through the decade that followed the dissolution of USSR, many threats and obstacles slowed down energy development and transport in the Caspian region. First of all, the uncertainty about the legal regime of the Caspian Sea (should the sea be divided into five equal sectors or into national sectors?) raised a series of problems about disputed waters and offshore rights. During the nineties, the political and economic instability of the Russian Federation was so phenomenal that it was almost leading the post-soviet state to a collapse. Furthermore the war in Chechnya \u2013 one of its main causes was Russia's determination to maintain its control on the pipelines transiting through South Caucasus \u2013 and the civil war in Afghanistan (which followed the exit in 1992 of the Russian military troops) were major obstacles to the edification of secured energy routes towards Europe and East Asia.

Once that the Russian Federation became more stable, its oil production began to play an international role (2001) and major international oil companies started to invest in its industry (BP, 2003). Even if it cannot be considered as an 'oil Czar', Russia still holds 5% of the world\u2019s oil supply. Furthermore the country possesses today the world's largest proven gas reserves and is considered as a gas 'Superpower'. Its grip on the energy pipelines grid remains a powerful lever which assures its domination on the Central Asian countries.

To escape from the Russian monopoly on Caspian energy exports, the three other Caspian littoral states born from the dissolution of the former Soviet Union (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan), are searching for alternative routes to sell and transport their oil and gas resources. Kazakhstan,