Governing Eurasian Critical Mineral Supply Chains: Institutional Lessons from the Southern Gas Corridor

This article examines critical mineral supply chains through a geo-economic and governance-oriented lens, drawing on Global Value Chain (GVC) theory and insights from asymmetric interdependence. It argues that supply vulnerabilities extend beyond geological endowment and extraction, increasingly reflecting coordination failures across transnational value chains, particularly at midstream and downstream stages involving refining, processing, logistics, certification, and regulatory alignment. While existing scholarship has largely treated hydrocarbon corridors and critical mineral supply risks as separate domains, limited attention has been paid to corridor-based governance arrangements capable of coordinating extraction, transit, processing, and market access across Eurasia. The study adopts a qualitative, policy-oriented methodology combining conceptual analysis, review of institutional and policy frameworks, and an embedded case study of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC). The SGC serves as an institutional reference to examine how geographically connected actors, including Central Asian producers, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, and European markets, have managed asymmetric interdependence through long-term cooperation, intergovernmental frameworks, and coordinated state and commercial participation. Building on these insights, the article develops a corridor-based governance perspective for Eurasian critical mineral supply chains. It conceptualizes the Eurasian Critical Minerals Corridor not as an existing institutional structure, but as an analytical framework for examining how variable-geometry cooperation can structure interdependence, reduce exposure to value-chain vulnerabilities, and support more resilient supply arrangements. In doing so, the article advances a governance-centered interpretation of critical mineral supply chains and demonstrates how institutional lessons from energy corridors can inform policy debates on critical mineral security and the political economy of the energy transition.