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The Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves, much of them located in the Caspian Sea basin itself. Proven natural gas reserves within Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil -- enough to service Europe's oil needs for 11 years. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day (44 million tons per year [Mt/y]).

By 2010, Western companies could increase production to about 4.5 million barrels a day (Mb/d) -- an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15 years. If this occurs, the region would represent about five percent of the world's total oil production, and almost 20 percent of oil produced among non-OPEC countries.

One major problem has yet to be resolved: how to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets where they are needed. There are few, if any, other areas of the world where there can be such a dramatic increase in the supply of oil and gas to the world market. The solution seems simple: build a "new" Silk Road. Implementing this solution, however, is far from simple. The risks are high, but so are the rewards.

John Maresca, Vice President, International Relations, of Unocal Corporation
Testimony to the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific  - 2/12/1998
 
Outside the oil industry, not many people would have exclaimed over the news, in January 1998, that the Taliban had signed an agreement allowing a 1,272km, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic- feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project to proceed. The proposed pipeline, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration (EIA), would have transported natural gas from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad natural gas field to Pakistan, and was projected to run from Dauletabad south to the Afghan border, through Herat and Kandahar, to Quetta in Pakistan before linking up with Pakistan's natural gas grid at Sui. 

By March, however, Unocal, the company leading the project, had announced that details would not be finalised immediately due to the civil war in Afghanistan. In August, the company announced it was suspending its role in the pipeline because of the military action the US government was taking in Afghanistan, as well as fighting between the Taliban and the opposition. By the end of the year, according to an EIA Country Analysis Brief, Unocal was announcing its withdrawal from Centgas (the Central Asian Gas Pipeline Ltd.) -- the consortium responsible for building the pipeline -- "citing low oil prices and turmoil in Afghanistan as making the pipeline project uneconomical and too risky." It had previously stated that the pipeline project would not proceed until an "internationally recognised government" was in place in Afghanistan. Unocal, however, was no stranger to unpopular governments: it was, after all, part of the consortium building a pipeline in Burma that human rights groups slammed for using forced labour and cooperating with a military dictatorship. Among the other members of that consortium, incidentally, was an oil company named Halliburton -- of which the CEO was none other than current Vice- President Richard Cheney. Unocal and Halliburton share other affinities, however: at the Collateral Damage Conference of the Cato Institute on 23 June 1998, Cheney himself made some of these clear, noting that "70 to 75 per cent of [Halliburton's] business is energy related, serving customers like Unocal, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and many other oil companies around the world." 

 
Natural gas deposits, later named the Yadana field, were first discovered offshore near Burma in the Andaman Sea in 1982. Beginning in the late 1980s, the Burmese government sought investors for a pipeline planned from the Yadana field across Burma to Thailand. In 1991, the government reached a preliminary agreement, formalized later, to deliver gas to the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT). In 1992. Total, a French oil corporation, agreed to develop the field with Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE). Unocal, a U.S. oil company, joined the venture in 1993. Finally, the Yadana field consortium-known as the Moattama Gas Transportation Company-was incorporated in December 1994. Its stakeholders include Total (31.24 percent), Unocal (28.26 percent), PTT (25.5 percent) and MOGE (15 percent).  Spie Capag of France completed the 62-kilometer onshore section of the Yadana pipeline to Thailand in 1998.
 
Prior to the pipeline's construction, the Burmese military forcibly relocated towns along the onshore route. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, "credible evidence exists that several villages along the route were forcibly relocated or depopulated in the months before the production-sharing agreement was signed."
EarthRights International (ERI) has charged in a lawsuit that the Yadana and Yetagun pipeline consortia-Unocal, Total and Premier-knew of (especially from their own consultants) and benefited from the crimes committed by the Burmese military on behalf of the projects.
 
An ERI investigation concluded that construction and operation of the pipelines has involved the use of forced labor, forced relocation and even murder, torture and rape. In addition, as the largest foreign investment projects in Burma, the pipelines will provide revenue to prop up the regime, perhaps for decades to come.
Halliburton failed to respond to repeated requests for comment on these allegations and other issues raised in this article.
Shortly before the election, Dick Cheney admitted on the Larry King Live! show that Halliburton had done contract work in Burma. Cheney defended the project by saying that Halliburton had not broken the U.S. law imposing sanctions on Burma, which forbids new investments in the country. "You have to operate in some very difficult places and oftentimes in countries that are governed in a manner that's not consistent with our principles here in the United States," Cheney told Larry King. "But the world's not made up only of democracies."
 
 

Since his [Dick Cheney's] candidacy, others have focused on his mixed financial record as CEO of Halliburton, and his enormous retirement package. We were interested more in Halliburton as a player in geopolitics. What we found is that Dick Cheney and Halliburton have been stirring a toxic mixture of oil, politics and business. Dick Cheney the politician opposes sanctions against almost all countries; Dick Cheney the businessman profits from working in many of those same countries. Dick Cheney the Secretary of Defense wages war on Iraq; Dick Cheney the businessman gets contracts to cleanup the damages and turns Halliburton into a giant defense contractor. Dick Cheney the government official makes high-level bank contacts; Dick Cheney the businessman obtains huge government loans for his company.

http://sheeple.net/Cheney.htm

The Halliburton Company, the Dallas oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.

From building cells for detainees at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root.

Although the unit has been building projects all over the world for the federal government for decades, the attacks of Sept. 11 have led to significant additional business. KBR is the exclusive logistics supplier for both the Navy and the Army, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation. The contract recently won from the Army is for 10 years and has no lid on costs, the only logistical arrangement by the Army without an estimated cost.

The government business has been well timed for Halliburton, whose stock price has tumbled almost two-thirds in the last year because of concerns about its asbestos liabilities, sagging profits in its energy business and an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into its accounting practices back when Vice President Dick Cheney ran the company. The government contracts, which the company said Mr. Cheney played no role in helping Halliburton win, either while he led the company or after he left, offer the prospect of a long and steady cash flow that impresses financial analysts.

The New York Times - July 12, 2002 (Registration Required)