While governments are most certainly important actors in transporting natural gas via pipelines from one country to another crossing others, they are not the only relevant actors. Private investors are fundamental to the international gas trade. Various factors affect their decision to sink money into an infrastructure in order to recuperate it and a bit more over a course of several decades. Uncertainty is a crucial element all companies have to deal with when investing in fixed assets. Uncertainty relates to technical, natural, financial, economic and political aspects, from less social to more social issues. Usually, investors calculate the risk they face over distinct periods of time using randomized models and weigh the return they feel they could make against those risks. Those risk models are based on assumptions that attach a probability to uncertainty. This paper suggests that an important category for the more social end of the uncertainty canon is trust. The idea is that trust greatly affects individual actors’ discount rates and hence their inclination to pursue short term maximum gains. Trust thus affects stakeholders’ willingness to comply to set norms. A lack of trust can render uncertain social situations unpredictable, as formal constraints do not structure action anymore. From the point of view of companies, this can be a major threat, as they are oftentimes the weaker party when push comes to shove against states and powerful social groups. Faced with this problem, companies, too, will apply high discount rates and try to minimize their value at risk. They will not invest, invest as little as possible or try to obtain guarantees for their investment and they will try to recuperate their money as fast as possible. Using the case of gas export from Azerbaijan to countries of the European Union, this hypothesis is tested and possible outcomes are assessed.
