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Poor Tajikistan Poised to Become Oil Power

In a little-noticed development, landlocked, impoverished Tajikistan has struck it big in an oil and gas field in the country’s southwest:

Independent estimates from Gustavson Associates currently place Bokhtar’s unrisked mean prospective recoverable resources at 114 trillion cu ft of gas and 8.5 billion bbl of crude oil and-or condensate.2

As such, Tajikistan’s gas and oil reserve base could ultimately prove to be on par with that of the world class offshore discoveries being made in Mozambique and Tanzania.

The poorest nation in the former USSR is about to confront the notorious “energy curse.” Will they follow the example of Turkmenistan, which is wallowing in poverty as political elites steal natural resource revenues? Or Kazakhstan, which is also corrupt, but has increased average salaries tenfold in the last eight years?

Watch this space — our next war may be in Central Asia.

 

Ted Rall
http://rall.com
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."

1 Comment.

  • Glenn
    November 15, 2013 7:52 PM

    If Tajikistan doesn’t have some nuclear weapons left over from the USSR, they will be walked all over by the “civilized” states of the West. (Moral justification to be supplied later.)

    Compare the invasions of North Korea and Iraq. One happened and one didn’t.

    Can anyone guess which had a credible threat to deter foreign aggression?

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