Word: oiled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...full-dress CIA briefing on the Caspian last August. The agency had set up a secret task force to monitor the region's politics and gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained petroleum engineers, had traveled through southern Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to sniff out potential oil reserves. When the policymakers heard the agency's report, Albright concluded that working to mold the area's future was "one of the most exciting things that...
American officials frown when outsiders call the battle over the Caspian another "Great Game," the term Rudyard Kipling used for the 19th century struggle for influence and control between the British and Russian empires. But another Great Game is what it is. Washington wants Caspian oil to flow through many pipelines so that no single country can bottle it up, and is adamantly against having a new pipeline pass through Iran. It is fine if some of the lines run through Russia, as they already do, but Russia should not be able to turn a valve and shut...
...entirely trust Russia, which resents the arrival of foreign influence in what were Soviet republics. To Washington, the Islamist regime in Iran looks even less friendly. "The last thing we need," says a White House aide, "is to rely on the Persian Gulf as the main access for more oil...
...last fall the U.S. was pressing hard for the option it favors, a system of oil-and- gas lines starting through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, running under the Caspian Sea to Baku, then through Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean. This elaborate scheme is not an easy sell. The long pipeline would cost about $4 billion to build and add up to $4 to the cost of each barrel of oil it carried. To many company executives, it seems easier to use the southern route through Iran or the northern route through Russia to the Black...
...says a senior Western oil executive, "we'd sign with the Iranians. In this part of the world, they are by far the most trustworthy partners for a pipeline deal. Terrorism? Who's going to blow up their own pipeline?" But the U.S. option, the east-west line, gathered support from some regional leaders--Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, for example--who thought it would be more secure...