Introduction—Cold War History of Soviet Oil and Natural Gas Pipelines
The indication that Russian oil and natural gas shipped by pipeline is on of the biggest drivers of geopolitical realignment can be seen in the reaction of the United States to Russia developing its oil and gas fields in the Caspian, Ural, and Arctic regions in the 1950s, and throughout subsequent decades constructing pipelines to the Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern and Central Europe. As anticipated, the logical extension of the pipelines protruding Westward would be not to route them through the Warsaw Pact countries but through neutral Austria into Southern Germany from the Southern branch of the Druzhba Pipeline from Poland to East Germany; and to West Germany from the Northern branch of the Druzhba pipeline.
Following Mahan’s differentiation of “production” and “wealth,” petroleum production does not become wealth until it is traded for goods that a country wants but does not produce. In this case, the Soviet Union wanted convertible Western currencies so they could buy products and reverse-engineer them to drive innovation in domestic production.
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