The thesis deals with the issue of energy security in the European Union, and the role played by Azerbaijan in the provision of the EU's energy independence and long-term stability. The author investigates the current issues of the European Union's energy policy, and the main threats impairing the EU's energy independence. Countries of the Caspian Basin, and particularly Azerbaijan, are investigated as the main alternative suppliers of energy resources for the European Union to increase its energy security. The author justifies and forecasts the future development of the EU-Azerbaijani relations in the energy sector taking into account the current policies implemented by the European Union in the field of energy security.

The Caspian land project attempts to address some problems such as: SHORTAGE OF HOUSING IN STOCKHOLM Creating a well-structured urban area with mix land use: Apartment, row house, semi-detached house, and villa that can address people´s desire to own their home with an economically acceptable price in comparison with similar properties in the city center. SHORTAGE OF TRAFIC & STREET NETWORK This project would also create a well-functioning street network inside the proposed project. ECONOMICAL PRICING • Providing housing for residents with the various budget , with focus on low and medium income residents. • Establish cheaper private housing in comparison with similar housing in the city center. •Creating a hybrid and multifunctional urban area with a commercial base( like the proposed shopping center) that can encourage financial sponsors to invest in this proposed project. SUSTAINABILITY CONCERNS • Creating a walkable urban area with a high-quality walking path that would encourage people to walk or cycle to commute. •Offering an opportunity to residents for utilizing urban gardening to provide a small part of residents`daily vegetable needs. • Providing an opportunity for people, especially elderly and children, to spend more time in nature.

Researchers and policy experts point to key issues and groups such as the Palestinian/Arab Israeli Conflict, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Saudi exported Wahhabism, and, in more recent times, the Iraq wars as being the source of militant Islam in this day in age. However, this perspective ignores key issues and ideals in to how this new form of Islam has emerged in recent decades. For instance, with all the conflicts that have occurred in recent decades, except for the 1979 Revolution in Iran, why have they not yielded Shari'a inspired Islamic states in Yemen, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories and Iraq? Currently the only Islamic states in the Arab world are ones that lay on the Persian Gulf that were established during their independence from colonial rule. One only has to look further east and to the north of the Middle East to see militant Islam taking hold in places like Chechnya, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Waziristan and a host of other areas which do not get the attention from many people in the West. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the years directly after, a political vacuum was formed that received almost no attention from the outside world except for states with historical and cultural similarities. Here Islam has and is being used as a military and political doctrine to accomplish goals and as an ideological base for launching new attacks against its proclaimed enemies. Indeed many of the key theologians and figures have come from the Arab world, but the rise of militant Islam could not have formed with this alone. Many of the fighters on the ground in alQaeda and its direct affiliated groups are indeed not Arabs but come from a wide range of different ethnic groups such as Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Pakistanis who have answered bin Laden's call of lesser jihad against the West. Rather than examining militant Islam through a Middle Eastern perspective, this author wishes to give an alternate view that the current rise of militant Islam in the world is directly associated with the internal political situation of the Greater Caspian Sea Basin and not the Middle East as so many people have proposed in the past. To examine this idea, this author will look extensively at the internal conditions of states that have allowed militant Islam to arise and mature in such a short time span in this often forgotten region. The primary purpose of the proposed paper is to examine the rise of militant Islam through a Caspian Sea region lens rather than a Middle Eastern one. This study will also examine violent groups in various states to understand how groups are able to form and how they differ from each other. Countries ranging from as far as Turkey to the Xinxiang Province in China and from the southern reaches of the Russian Federation to Pakistan will be the primary focus.

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As global energy demand increases in the next century increased demand will focus global attention on geographical energy rich concentrated areas. One such area of interest is Central Asia and the primary vehicle for energy extraction in the region, the Caspian Sea. The long history of oil development is being reignited as global powers increase their interests with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of three new littorals around the body of water. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan create new opportunities for interested parties such as the United States, China and the European Union. The new littorals challenge the pre-existing legal status quo of Iran and Russia but no energy extraction can continue on large-scales without legal consensus and efficient modes of transportation. The aim of this study is to explain why energy production stagnation has existed in the region and prove that the most efficient and beneficial position local states, global powers, and corporations can strive towards is by adopting cooperative policy structures on all levels. The results of the study find that cooperative structures are mandatory due to the unique legal and transportation issues of the region refuting the applicability of Realism and other non-cooperative analysis models.

By studying zones of conflict in the Caspian Sea Basin and examining past and current policies in the region, we can incorporate the successes and failures into other conflicts around the world. This research will add to the discipline of International Relations a new synthesis of different types of conflict for similarly finite resources. It is vital to the study of international politics to study this region and these unique arenas of conflict. Most of the conflicts have ties to ethnic strife. By focusing on both conflict settlement and conflict resolution, an attainable solution may be found to the problems of Central Asia and applied elsewhere in the world.

U.S. strategy toward Southern Caucasus and Central Asia has not been studied sufficiently. The present study, which takes the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independence of the states of CASC (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) as its starting point, is probably the most detailed tracing of the evolution of U.S. strategy toward this specific region hitherto available. The study is methodologically committed to process-tracing and covers U.S. strategy toward CASC over a 15-year period covering three separate presidential administrations. A vast material has been collected and studied, and the primary contribution of the study is empirical. The study also sets out develop a neoclassical realist framework for analysing U.S. strategy, which introduces strategic culture as an intervening variable between the external actions of the U.S and the international environment.  The theory in this study is based on three pillars. The first is structural realism. With its focus on the international environment and the pressure that is exerts, the study accepts the systemic imperative described by structural realists. The second pillar is cultural/constructivist theory. The study presupposes the notion of malleable norms and identities promoted by such theories. The third and most important pillar is neoclassical realism, which aims at finding intervening variables between a state´s external actions and the international environment. The definition of U.S. strategic culture relies heavily on American political and diplomatic history, the main argument being that U.S. policymakers constantly draw on U.S. strategic culture and have strong incentives to frame their policies so as to be culturally acceptable. The strategic culture thus both constrains and enables actions. The framework contributes to the ongoing effort to bridge the gap between realist and constructivist perspectives. This study will demonstrate that U.S. strategy toward CASC was shaped by specific U.S. strategic culture to a considerable extent. Throughout the entire period studied, the declared goal of the U.S. was the integration of CASC into the community of liberal market democracies. One very important theoretical finding of this study is that U.S. strategic culture had a powerful impact on U.S. strategy, independently of international pressures. This study will also demonstrate that U.S. strategy was incoherent, inconsistent, bureaucratically uncoordinated, susceptible to domestic pressure, and frequently subordinated to more important strategic goals outside of the region.

This thesis will focus on Azerbaijan's oil and gas industry; how the country uses its energy revenues within its economy; how it avoids economic pathologies such as the "Dutch Disease"; Azerbaijan's role within the Caspian Basin, and finally, the European Union's energy security and how Azerbaijan's energy resources can impact it. The Republic of Azerbaijan is a natural resource-rich country, and uses its energy resources as a means of socio-economic advancement and stability. Recent developments within the country's natural gas sector have allowed Azerbaijan to become a net gas exporter. The EU's growing demand for energy resources illustrates how important it is for states to have access to secure, stable, and diverse sources of energy. Energy resource exploration and the subsequent export of these products to international markets play a crucial role for the Republic of Azerbaijan's economy. Therefore, this thesis will first provide a brief evaluation of the history of Azerbaijan's energy sector; an overview of the current situation and recent developments; and explore how energy revenues are being distributed in the economy. It will define the interests of other important actors such as Russia, Turkey and the USA; and finally, it will assess the EU energy security, the role of Azerbaijan as the...

Mud volcanoes constitute an important component of petroliferous basins and their understanding is essential for successful exploration and development of hydrocarbon fields. They occur in both extensional and compressive tectonic settings, along with passive and active continental margins. Although extensive research exists on the geochemistry, geomorphology and stratigraphic evolution of these localized fluid flow structures, little is known about their geomechanical characteristics. This research investigates the geomechanics of mud volcanoes from the South Caspian Basin and West Nile Delta. This is achieved by establishing a workflow for geomechanical assessment of mud volcanoes using a P-wave velocity dataset from across the mud volcano within the offshore South Caspian Basin. This objective is developed further with the availability of seismic and wellbore data from around the Giza mud volcano, offshore West Nile Delta. Preliminary results of this study from the South Caspian Basin enable confidence in estimating the realistic magnitudes of elastic rock properties, stresses and fluid pressures from empirical and analytical correlations. Moreover, analysis of the variations in fluid pressures allow the fluid flow models around the mud volcano to be constrained and their gradients provide preliminary estimates of the drilling window. Structural and stratigraphic analysis around the Giza mud volcano offers insight into the formation of the mud volcano during the Quaternary and how the fault networks on the hanging wall of the arcuate tectonic fault have acted as conduits for primarily the pre-Pliocene fluids exploiting the areas of weakness along the hanging wall of the fault by entraining the Pliocene sediments. Fluid pressure evaluation reveals small overpressures caused by disequilibrium compaction. Further analysis offers insight into the critical fluid pressures that control fault movement, the stresses responsible for rock deformation around the wellbore and the width of the drilling window constrained by the fracturing of the strata. Analysis presented here provides details on the geomechanical significance of mud volcano environments, with implications for engineering practices. Overall, findings contribute to a systematic understanding of mud volcano settings not only from a field exploration and development point of view, but also at a wider scale for basin analysis and relatively small scale for play analysis.