Energy Resources and Pipeline Geopolitics

Central Asia and the Caucasus hold hydrocarbon reserves of global significance: Kazakhstan alone holds proven oil reserves the U.S. Energy Information Administration places among the largest outside the Middle East, concentrated in the giant Tengiz field, discovered in 1979 and developed from the 1990s by a consortium including Chevron, and the offshore Kashagan field in the Caspian; Turkmenistan, meanwhile, holds the Galkynysh natural gas field, whose reserves BP's Statistical Review of World Energy has ranked among the two or three largest gas fields on the planet, alongside Russia's Urengoy and Qatar/Iran's shared North Field/South Pars. Because all of these states are landlocked or, in the Caspian littoral states' case, bordered only by an inland sea with no outlet to open ocean, the central geopolitical fact of the region's energy geography is that every barrel of oil or cubic meter of gas produced must cross at least one other country's territory before reaching a world market, giving transit states, and the great powers competing for influence over transit routes, decisive leverage.