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Dave Cohen on March 16, 2006 - 6:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Scientists Find Big Afghan Oil Resources

Always consider the source and the hopeful language.


Nearly 1.6 billion barrels of oil, mostly in the Afghan-Tajik Basin, and about 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, mainly in the Amu Darya Basin, could be tapped, said the U.S. Geological Survey and Afghanistan's Ministry of Mines and Industry.

More work remains to assess petroleum reserves, conduct seismic exploration and rehabilitate wells, say government and industry officials.


Nowadays, that would be considered a pretty big find if any of this could be believed. Karzai is under big pressure to find some alternative to opium, which is Afghanistan's largest cash crop. Announcements like this should be taken with a big grain of salt.
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TrueKaiser on March 16, 2006 - 7:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
of course they should be taken with a grain of salt but they should not be discounted either.
just trying to help keep everyone on top of the information.
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K on March 16, 2006 - 7:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It could be important to Afghanistan.  Globally, however, 1.6 billion barrels is less than 20 days worth of production - a drop in the bucket.  
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Dave Cohen on March 16, 2006 - 7:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, you did ask "is it just a bs claim?"

I think it's probably a bullshit claim.

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LJR on March 16, 2006 - 9:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Opium sounds like a very profitable line of business when oil's three times today's price.  Karzai might just want to think about that.  A very nice pipeful of dreams about all those trips we used to take could command a good price.
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KabulVan on March 17, 2006 - 9:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Don't believe this announcement contains a significant amount of BS. While Karzai is under pressure to fix the opium problem, turning opium farmers into oil workers is not the answer. Very little oil and gas exploration has been done in Afghanistan ( see http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/afghan.html ) and I see the findings as credible. Have a geologist friend looking at the data and will check into it personally next time I'm in the area.

It's also important to know that this area has very little infrastructure and it will be many, many years before these resources can be developed - if ever. For example, Bamiyan Province has one of the largest iron ore deposits in Asia, but no one (to my knowledge) has ever proposed developing it. Why? No decent paved roads to Bamiyan and the area has never had electricity other than that supplied by generators. To illustrate the problem, it's about 100 miles from Kabul to Bamiyan - about 8 hours of dust and bone jarring bumps

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123 comments on New Open thread

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