Oil rigs on the Caspian Sea poke from the horizon at Sangachal terminal outside Baku, home to one of the biggest oil and gas processors in world.
Operated by BP with the state oil company of Azerbaijan, Sangachal is famous for its appearance in the James Bond movie The World is Not Enough. But it has much more importance than that. Now gearing up to produce one million barrels of crude oil per day for export to the European market, the terminal is already exporting almost 800,000 barrels daily.
To get to European markets, the oil travels through the $2.9 billion (€2 billion) Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline on a 1,768km underground route that brings it to Turkey's Mediterranean coast. There it is shipped on to refineries for preparation for its sale into the market.
The significance of the BTC pipeline goes far beyond the simple provision of oil into an ever-thirsty market. As the first service to connect the Caspian and Mediterranean seas, the line acts as a foil against Russia's stranglehold over European energy markets.
Open since May 2005, the BTC is designed to tap reserves of 5.4 billion barrels of oil in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian basin. Reserves elsewhere in the sector - which have not yet been proven - are already estimated to have potential for another 3.6 billion barrels.
There is more. Azerbaijan has enough natural gas for 150 years at current extraction rates, according to its president, Ilham Aliyev. In July, gas from the Shah Deniz discovery in the Caspian was delivered into the Turkish national grid via a South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), routed through Azerbaijan and Georgia.
From Turkey, the gas will go into the Greek grid. Enemies by tradition, Turkey and Greek have linked their gas networks in the interests of European energy security. Their joint network will be extended to Italy, to carry gas to south central Europe by 2011. Separate plans for a 3,300km connection known as the Nabucco Pipeline will bring gas from Turkey to Europe's biggest transmission hub at Baumgarten an der March in Austria.
The value to western Europe of these pipelines and the security of supply they offer was thrown into sharp relief last week when Russia's Gazprom threatened to cut gas supplies to Ukraine over unpaid debts, a warning that resonates across a Europe that receives a quarter of all its gas from the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, 80 per cent of which is piped through Ukraine.
A debt deal was reached, but only after Kiev agreed to sell a large portion of its gas reserves back to Gazprom, weakening its position in any future dispute. Ukraine, like neighbouring Belarus, another major transit country for Russian energy, is also yet to agree a cost for gas in 2008 - when Moscow's price is almost certain to rise.
Russian officials have dismissed "hysteria" over their regular price and debt disputes, which in winter 2006 prompted them to reduce gas flow to Ukraine, which in turn caused an immediate drop in supplies to countries as far apart as Romania and France, Italy and Poland.
Last winter, Russia quarrelled with Belarus over gas prices and briefly stopped pumping oil into a pipeline that crosses that country, which carries 20 per cent of Germany's oil and delivers energy along the way to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Ukraine, like nearby Georgia and Moldova, complain that Russia disrupts their energy supply to punish them for forging closer ties with the EU and Nato, an argument supported by Poland and the Baltic states, which are already members of both blocs but fear their cool political relations with Moscow will translate into gas and oil shortages.
Irked by Gazprom's latest spat with Ukraine, a host of Russia's neighbours launched bold initiatives this week to slash their dependence on Kremlin energy.
Yesterday, just as gas price talks were due to begin in Moscow, Belarus announced plans to build its first nuclear power plant next year. "Unfortunately, energy has been turned from a purely economic issue into a political one, into a factor affecting relations with other countries and with organisations," said Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. "There is no alternative to producing our own nuclear energy to ensure our national security."
His unexpected statement came the day after Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan formed a consortium to bring Caspian Sea crude to Poland and the Baltic Sea, to provide an alternative to Russian oil.
They plan to reverse the flow of a pipeline that currently carries Russian crude to Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa, and instead pump Azerbaijani oil north through the pipe to a refinery in central Poland and then on to the Baltic port of Gdansk. "The European Union must develop a common approach to the issues at hand, and speak in one voice," to deal with issues including "increased dependence on a single, unpredictable source of imports," said Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus.
The project would eventually also transport Kazakh oil into Poland and have a spur to Lithuania, where Moscow cut off deliveries to a major refinery last year after the government sold it to a Polish firm instead of a Russian rival; Lithuania also plans to build a new nuclear power station in co-operation with Poland, Latvia and Estonia.
Further south, Hungary and Croatia are discussing the creation of a new terminal for liquified natural gas on Croatia's Adriatic coast.
