Before I went to Kazkhstan last year I knew almost nothing about the country besides it’s general location. When I bring it up in conversation many people have never heard of it, few know anything about it, and of course virtually noone would ever actually consider going there.

While not exactly an introduction to the country, this article makes a good case for why one should know Kazakhstan.

Ten Reasons for loving Kazakhstan

4. Oily

. . . what is thought to be the world’s biggest oil field was discovered there in 2002. Specialists believe the offshore Kashagan field, in the Caspian Sea, contains about 40 billion barrels of the black stuff. Western governments, keen to reduce their dependency on the Middle East, have snuggled up to the Kazakhs ever since. There are also plans to construct an oil pipeline to China later this year. The upshot is . . .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2005 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Central Asia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.