The U.S. Energy Department estimates proven reserves for the entire Caspian region are 34 billion barrels of oil, with up to 235 billion barrels possible. Gas estimates for possible reserve are as high as 328 trillion cubic feet of gas. American interests are significant in a region that is now estimated to hold one-sixth of the worlds petroleum reserves, where consortiums include American, British, French, Dutch, Norwegian. Russian, Kazakh!Azeri/Turkmen!Uzbek partners. Notably, OPEC participants are under-represented in the Caspian. Most of the region is still reeling from the breakup of the former Soviet Union. Poverty levels are high and unemployment reaches 80 percent in some areas. Meanwhile, clean water, sewage systems. electricity, transportation and telecommunications often are not available. Proceeds from the sale of oil and gas concessions and revenues from oil sales are not reaching the average citizen, who is usually involved in agriculture, small level trading or subsistence-level cottage industry manufacturing. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has said~ poverty is the primary cause of political instability. If so, this region is at immediate risk Each time I travel through the region, seeing the current situation has the impact of a gut punch, perhaps becaus poverty is coupled with extreme environmental pollution left behind by the petrochemical and oil productio operations of Soviet times. I never get used to it, although I have been to Azerbaijan seven times in conjunctio with economic development projects funded by the United States Agency for International Developn.ent. I hay seen similar sites in travels to Uzbekistari and Kazakhstan.
Because the Caspian Sea region is landlocked, oil and gas exports must travel through pipelines. The BP, Amoco! Azerbaijan oil company pipeline, now in its initial phases of construction, will extend from the capit and Caspian port city of Baku through central Azerbaijan and the second largest city, Ganja. It then will exten through Georgia and finally through Tur~ey to the Black Sea port city of Ceyhan. It will avoid Iran and othe problematic areas.
The implications of the new Baku-Ceyhan pipeline are far-reaching. During the first two weeks of December, was in Azerbaijan again and had a chance to see the impact it already is having. I was based both in Baku, th beginning point of the new pipeline, and in Ganja; an important point along the way.In Ganja, I was lucky to find a hotel room because crews from BP-Amoco had taken everything available; eve dorm rooms in the local college. As Ganja residents walked home on pitch-dark streets in a town where gasi not available (it is sold to Georgia), electricity is rationed to two hours per day and jobs are scarce to unobtainabl foreign workers laughed and joked in the large hotel dining room. Government officials arrived in Mercedes 60 limousines. While uneven distribution of wealth is sadly typical in the Third World, here there are dangerou global geopolitical implications.
In Baku, the Nov. 27 issue of the Caspiari Business News suggests that the Taliban, led by Osarna bin Laden Saudi interests, had once been courted by U.S. petroleum interests to support a pipeline from the Caspian regi through Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and to the Indian Ocean.
They became enraged when it became clear that the pipeline would be used to flood world markets not on with Caspian oil and gas but also Russiar petroleum, which would effectively destroy OPEC's ability to influen world oil prices. Consequently, the well-educated Taliban recruits drawn from Saudi Arabia. Algeria and Lib viewed it as a matter of economic survival to keep the cartel alive. The article also said bin Laden has support in Saudi Arabia who applaud his efforts a.s a freedom fighter and defender, not of Islam, but of OPEC. This vi is echoed in the Russian media, led by Pravda, the Moscow Times and others which point to Sept. 11 as a res of a global geopolitical play for control of world oil, particularly in light of the new production froii~ the Caspi and Russia that will presumably enter global markets within 10 years.
The popular notion that the war is the outcome of long-simmering post-colonial tensions is discüunted as propagandistic pioy to appeal to the masses, and to provide a kind of righteous self-justification in a grand good vs evil morality play. From the vantage point of people on the ground in Azerbaijan, the prospect of a pipeline that would lead to a shift in the balance of power in world oil caused the events of Sept. 11.
When I read the article, my first reaction was skepticism~ Would people really go to such lengths to eliminate competition? Do individual members of OPEC really believe that Caspian and Russian petroleum output will destroy their economies? Obviously, this was a Baku-certric look at world events, and yet it was quite thought provoking.
However remote, the possibility that the Baku-Ceyhon pipeline could precipitate such a juggernaut reinforces the importance of maintaining good relations with Azerbaijan, and assisting with economic development in order to assure political stability. Azerbaijan is allowing the use of its air space for access to Afghanistan, and in the future it will allow use of its pipeline space to access Caspian oil. It is critical that the country stay stable, and a firm friend of the U.S.
Annans scenario could activate itself, and poverty couli lead to political instability, without economic development assistance containing a hefty multiplier so that the majority of citizens in the Caspian region feel the benefits of increased employment, income and standard of Iiving Azerbaijan, including the larger Caspian region, is the last place in the world the U.S. can afford to see instability.

The author is proiect director for International development at the university of Oklahoma's College of Continuing Educator'