for a good map of the region check out the CIA world factbook here:

Here's their map of Tajikistan with neighbours:

On the CIA site, click the Asia reference map... the JPG is a little small... but the PDF is nice and gives you the ability to zoom in.

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This set of links especially would be a good thing for others to see, so they can sample The Oil Drum's content, so hit this hard, if you are so inclined!

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I think that you multiply tonnes by about 7 (depending on the gravity of the oil) to get barrels (we are comparing weight to volume).

Note that Russian oil exports in 2006 are down, versus 2005: http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/finances/26.html?id_issue=11656451

OOOhhhh, the conversion for tons/barrel

1 barrel per day (b/d) = 50 tonnes per year (approx.)

More here

http://www.eppo.go.th/ref/UNIT-OIL.html

This article from "Oil of Russia" magazine seems pretty sobering regarding future Russian oil production and is at odds with the EDTM's forecasts. It's Lukoil's magazine though, and reads as a poorly-disguised plea for lower taxation.

The statistics of the last 60 years show that Russia's oil-producing industry has been subject to the classical laws of phased development. According to these laws, the industry had already completed its buildup stage in the years before 1975 and moved on to the level of producing approximately 400 to 500 million tons per year. At this level, the volume of oil produced in Russia has been held constant for approximately 30 years; now, however, there are signs justifying the assertion that the stage of stable oil production has ended, and we are entering a new phase in which the volumes of oil produced will gradually decline.

And later:

Starting in 1945, the systemic decline in the rates of oil production growth has been approximately 2% every five years, and is now leading to an inevitable transition to the stage of negative yearly growth in production. Our linear and polynomial forecasting models, constructed for extreme cases with a high correlation coefficient of 77–92%, show that rates of production growth could be negative as early as the 2005–2010 interval. In 2011, the two forecasting models meet at negative rates of approximately 6–7% production growth annually.

One of the main reasons for the decline in the volume of oil production is the increasingly difficult geological and technical conditions in the development of oilfields. This progressive worsening of conditions has led to an increase in the amount of labor involved in recovering oil reserves. In fact, since 1990s every newly produced ton of oil has been more labor intensive than the previous one.

Reserves are getting more and more difficult to recover. As the statistics show, there has been (since 1990) a doubling every ten years in the labor intensity in oil production.

I don't understand the point that's made several times that an increasing oil price leads to a decline in production growth rates, e.g. this bit:

High world prices for oil (more than $30 per barrel since 2004) are merely accelerating the systemic trend toward the decline in average annual rates of growth in the production of oil. Throughout the last 35 years, the rise in the price of Urals crude (more than $30 per barrel) has led to a decline in the average annual rates of growth in oil production.

With a price of more than $30 per barrel for Urals crude, there is obviously an additional increase in oil companies' operating and tax costs that forces them to shut down increasingly less productive reserves of oil. As a result, higher rates of production decommissioning lead to a drop in overall volumes of oil production.

Can anyone explain this? Seems counter-intuitive to me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what he's saying.

great

it is necessary to create conditions so as to ramp up http://www.learntec.net/ gas recovery of independent producers, whose potential is limited now by both the existing system of contracted access to the unified gas supply system and

A quote from an article I found after Turkmenbashi died

Gazprom Squeezed

Finally, the emerging contours of competition for access to energy resources in Central Asia are another cloud on the horizon for Gazprom. Gazprom's short-term strategy envisages a major increase in purchases of Central Asian gas. Vladimir Milov, from the Institute for Energy Policy, explained in a briefing at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C., on March 16 that Gazprom will have no means to offset declining domestic gas production beginning in 2008, and by 2010 will be purchasing 100 bcm of gas from Central Asia. Gazprom is counting on Turkmenistan to provide the bulk of that gas, with purchases slated to go to 70-80 bcm a year as early as 2007-08.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/4/55F9574D-407A-4777-9724-944E6C2ECD7B.html

I expect Russia and Europe wii lean hard on the whoever becomes the new ruler to cancel any plans they have to export gas to China.

Here's an article I stumbled across in an article from the Jan. 3 edition of The Economist

Gazprom’s decision to hike prices for the former Soviet Union is driven by a looming gap between the gas it can produce or buy from Central Asia, and the gas demanded by its customers at home and abroad.

Its nice to see an established journal agree with peakers on some issues.