It was on the 13^th of july 2009 when the Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann flew to Ankara and signed a state-contract about a future Eurasian energy project under the auspices of the president of the EU-commission José Manuel Barroso and the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Nabucco, so the name of the planned project that should be put into practice by 2014/15, follows one geopolitical logic: it should weaken the Russian position in supplying energy for Western Europe and avoid the transfer of gas through Ukraine and Belarus.

Over 40 years after the first contract between Vienna and – the then Soviet – Moscow the Austrian biggest energy plant, OMV (Austrian Mineral Oil Administration), takes position against Russian interests by leading important parts of the Nabucco project.

One can be of different opinion concerning the viability of the Nabucco project as a whole, but its strong will to transfer gas from the Caspian region through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria without touching Russian or Ukrainian territory is visible. With the technical possibility to use the pipeline of 3300 kilometer in both directions, Turkey is conceived to be the turntable for the future European gas supply. With the help of this technical infrastructure the Turkish ports on the Black Sea could become important hotspots not only for Asian gas (including Russian, by the way) but also for Algerian and Libyan gas. In that sense the Nabucco pipeline is part of a geopolitical shift from a historical Russian-Austrian to a future Turkish-Austrian relation. We find the counter-strategy in the Baltic Sea where a Russian-German gas-project is in progress.

Historical development

When the Potsdam Treaty in August 1945 declared “German property” (“Deutsches Eigentum”) as a means for the allies to take reparations from the newly established Austrian state, France and the Soviet Union used this possibility. The Austrian energy sector with its quite well developed oil fields north-east of Vienna and the oil industry was taken over by the Soviet Union at the moment when Austria was split into four regions controlled by the liberating forces. Before World War II most of the oil fields in the so-called Marchfeld belonged to the Socony Vacuum Oil Group (later: Mobil Oil) and to Royal Dutch (later: Shell Oil). After Nazi-Germany occupied Austria in March 1938 new oil fields were opened by German investors like “Preussag”, and after the USA declared war on Berlin in December 1941 most of the foreign owners sold and/or had to sell their property to German enterprises. In August 1945 the Austrian oil industry, which supplied the country to a great extent with energy - and is even today a 10%-supplier of oil -, was more or less totally in the hands of German firms.

At this very moment, late August 1945, a plan to establish a bi-national Austrian-Soviet project arose to exploit the oil reserves in eastern Austria. The name of this project was “Sanaphta”. The Austrian chancellor Karl Renner, member of the Socialist Party, backed the idea as well as the head of the Communist Party and vice-chancellor of the time, Johan Koplenig. Strong opposition came from the conservatives around Leopold Figl (who later in 1955 signed the state-treaty with the four allies) and from Adolf Schärf, main figure of the atlantic wing within the social democrats. Washington blackmailed the Austrian officials and threatened not to recognize the first government and to postpone the delivering of release in case this bi-national energy project would be realized. “Sanaphta” failed.

With his sheet of command number 17 the Soviet General Kurassow declared former German property to become a Soviet one on the 5th of July 1946. Only three weeks later the Austrian government enacted a law to nationalize some main branches of the economy, especially the oil industry. This law was passed in accordance with the USA and can be seen as a last attempt to avoid Soviet ownership of the former US-, British and Netherlands oil enterprises. Moscow did not respect the nationalizations in the Soviet sector, which was controlled by the Red Army, including those regions of eastern Austria where the oil fields are situated.

Between 1946 and 1955 (when the four allies left Austria) the exploitation and refinery of oil in Austria was under Soviet control. The company called “Soviet Oil Administration” (SMV), which was administrated by the Soviet ministry for energy and controlled by the planning institutions “Gosplan” and “Gusimz”, developed the oil fields and enlarged them. In 1954 12.000 people worked for the SMV, the directors were Soviet citizens, many workers were members of the communist party of Austria.

The weeks before the signing of the Austrian state-treaty, which rendered the full sovereignty to the country on the 15^th of Mai 1955, were decisive for the Austrian-Soviet relations in energy questions. Vienna and Moscow agreed on the transfer of ownership of the Soviet owned company from Soviet to Austrian property. In the Moscow Memorandum (15^th of April 1955) the deal was fixed: Moscow sold the SMV for 150 Mio. U$ and Austria agreed to deliver oil to the Soviet Union for 10 years. Politically Moscow obliged Vienna to guarantee, that the new Austrian property would not fall into the hands of the former foreign (German, US- or British) owners. This veto to re-install former owners was included in article 22/13 of the state treaty – and broken by Austrian and US-officials already before the state-treaty was signed. On the 10^th of Mai 1955 – only five days before achieving full sovereignty – the so-called Vienna Memorandum was negotiated between Austria and the USA. Washington put enormous pressure on the Austrian officials to overcome the restrictive paragraph concerning pre-Nazi US-owners in the energy sector. As a result of the Vienna Memorandum the Austrian negotiators signed the contrary of what was agreed in the Moscow Memorandum four weeks before. Austria guaranteed to the USA to restitute former rights of exploitation to US- and other foreign enterprises. The Vienna Memorandum was not made public at the time. And the later Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky who participated as a vice state-secretary in Moscow and Vienna to sign the two contradictory memoranda called the Vienna Memorandum a cheat towards Moscow

in an interview which he gave to the author after his resignation of the chancellorship.

After the state treaty was signed, the SMV was nationalized. And in 1960 Socony Vacuum Oil (Mobil) and Shell were given back their rights to exploit the oil and gas fields in eastern Austria, more over they established a distribution system for petrol stations. In the refinery system of Austria, Mobil and Shell each owned 13% of the centralized Austrian oil and gaz consortium, giving them a blocking minority of 26% in the whole oil and gaz industry of the country.

Energy treaty between Vienna and Moscow

In the middle of the Cold War Austria was the first and for a long time only country trading oil and gaz with the Soviet Union and other countries of the Comecon. This special relation was rooted in the period between 1945 and 1955 and the Moscow Memorandum fixing the Austrian delivery of oil to the Soviet Union. In the late 1960ies the direction of energy trade changed. Gaz was made transportable for long distances. Now Soviet gaz was pumped into the so-called “Druschba”-pipeline to provide Austria and other western countries with energy.

The first joint enterprise was established between Austria and CSSR in 1966 when a treaty was signed to exploit a common gaz field between Austrian Zwerndorf and Slovakian Vysoka. The Austrian OMV bought Slovak gaz. A much greater deal was done two years later in 1968. At this time Moscow and Vienna signed a contract to connect Austria to the pipeline of “Druschba” and to deliver Soviet gaz for the country. This treaty initially signed for 23 years was renewed several times and is valid till today. There was no interruption of delivering gaz continuously from the 1^st of September 1968 to the 6th of January 2009 when Kiev blocked the transfer of Russian gaz to exercise pressure on the European Union.

In the late 1960s Soviet oil appeared on the Austrian market. In October 1973 when the oil shock hit the Western industrialized countries because OPEC rose prizes by 75%, the big Austrian OMV-refinery in Schwechat worked with 30% of Soviet oil. The state-owned OMV (Austrian Mineral Adminstration) was privatized at the end of the 1980s. One important foreign investor, Abu Dhabi Investment Group, bought 13%. Today (last figures of 2007) the big Austrian energy supplier OMV’s owner-structure is the following: 31,5% are to the state-holding ÖIAG, 17,6% are hold by IPIC/ Abu Dhabi and 50,9% by smaller share-holders (10% UK, 9% USA). The oil is coming from Kasachstan (23%), Iraq (17%), Algeria (13%), Libya (10%), own Austrian fields (10%), …. Russia (3%).

Gaz in 2008 comes from the following countries: Russia (40,5%), own Austrian fields (37,3%), Norway (8,8%). The OMV as one of the global players in the energy sector is active in exploiting gaz and oil all over the world. There are also two engagements in Russia, in the Komi and in the Saratov province.

The shock of January 2009

In the night from the 6^th to the 7^th of January 2009 the gaz pipelines around the Austrian turntable in Baumgarten were empty for the first time after more than 40 years. Baumgarten is situated six kilometres west of the Slovak border and functions as a turntable for partner pipelines going to Italy, former Yugoslavia and Germany. In normal times 30% of the Russian gaz exports to Europe run through Baumgarten which amounts to about 45 Mrd. cubic metres per anno. Together with the Jamal-pipeline running through Belarus and the smaller “Blue Stream” through the Black Sea“, “Druschba” completes the actual structure of Russian exports of gaz to the West.

Since Boris Jelzin’s protégé and prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, capitalized the key utilities of the former Soviet ministry of gaz and created one of the world’s mightiest enterprises “, Gazprom”, in 1992, the political changes were followed by economic ones on a European level. Crude methods of rising energy prizes dominate the history of “Gazprom”. Belarus and Ukraine as the only transit countries for Russian energy exports to the West are constantly put under pressure. This pressure is a mix of economic conflicts over prizes and transfer fees as well as a fight about the ownership of pipelines and compressing gaz stations on the one side and a series of political interventions on the other side. Kiev and Minsk answer with similar methods of blackmailing.

The contractual relationship between Moscow and Vienna changed as well. The certainty and security of long-term treaties in the past is actually attacked in different forms from both sides. For Moscow it took more than a decade to secure property and ownership after the breakdown of the Soviet Union with its rough methods of privatizations in a process of primitive accumulation. Since the Russian state again war able to control at least the main branches like energy exploitation and delivery, international relations are again based on treaties […] Although it is evident that NATO, EU and USA are using the ethnic and national disintegration following the dissolution of the Soviet state in 1991, Moscow failed by its own incapacities to establish an economic integration in the region. The power of “Gazprom” does not include any offer towards a wider integration of neighbours and ex-Soviet partners, but is mixing economic and geopolitical interests of the leading class around the Kremlin. Western Europe is touched by this condition and uses any divergence between Moscow and Kiev, Minsk, Chisinau or others to deepen the gap between the former partners.

On the other hand Austria lost its instruments of an own national foreign policy when it joined the European Union in 1995. More than that: Vienna by this act broke its neutrality, which was an informal condition to achieve the state-treaty in 1955, not only in an institutional and political sense but also militarily, when the government signed the “Amsterdam Treaty” of 1997 transfering the European Union into a military union. Not only in terms of energy politics, Vienna submitted its national interests under the system of EU-regulations. This means that Vienna is de facto if not de iure no more an economic and political agent in international relations.

The capitalisation of “Gazprom” and the use of its power by the leading class around the Kremlin on the one side and the disappearance of a national “Austrian” interests as a result of the privatizations in the late 1980s and the membership in the EU in 1995 changed the parameters of the relations between Moscow and Vienna totally. The blackmailing of “orange” Kiev to stop the transfer of Russian energy to Western Europe during heavy Ukraine-Russian disputes on prices and transfer fees were used by Brussels to discuss the idea of diversifying Western energy supply. As a consequence the big Austrian energy company, OMV, became one of the driving forces to establish new routes of energy-supply for Western Europe. Seen from Moscow, Vienna in that respect has moved far westward and lost its role as in intermediary between Moscow and the capitals of Western Europe.