Well after some pritty thorough researching, I have concluded that there just isn't enough information out there for anyone to come up with a substantial answer to exactly how much oil is located in the Caspian Sea region. The simple fact is that no one has done enough research in the entire area to come up with a Factual answer. Everything is currently based on estimates.
Anyways, here is a pritty good site with some good information and ESTIMATES on how much oil could possibly come out of the Caspian Sea region and Central Asia.
The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia
by Rosemarie Forsythe
Adelphi, Paper 300
With billions of dollars and crucial strategic influence at stake, the struggle for control over the vast oil resources in the Caucasus and Central Asia is a tale of political intrigue, fierce commercial competition, geo-strategic rivalries, ethnic feuding and elusive independence. Energy resources in this region are concentrated mainly in the Caspian Sea Basin, in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, but some of the area's other states, such as Georgia and Armenia, also play a role in energy export issues. Straddling Europe, the Near East and Asia,
the Caspian region is one of the largest unexploited sources of oil in the world. Proven and possible reserves are estimated to be as high as 200 billion barrels, putting the region on a par with Iraq.(1) In addition, the area is rich in natural gas with estimated proven and possible reserves of up to 7.89 trillion cubic metres - as much as those of the US and Mexico combined.(2)
The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent rise of the more vulnerable and less experienced newly independent states of the Caucasus and Central Asia led to an intense political and commercial competition for control over oil resources and export. Some analysts have compared this situation to the 'Great Game' - a nineteenth-century rivalry between Victorian England and Tsarist Russia. The matrix of national identities, mentalities, goals and instruments, however, has changed significantly. In addition, the new players differ in their perception of the game, with some maintaining that the competition is no longer a zero-sum game, while others still believe that it is and see the world through a traditional balance-of-power framework. The stakes involved, however, remain unchanged -- power, influence, security, wealth.
The new playing field is inherently complex and is further complicated by a vast array of problems. Within the region, these include intra-regional conflict, internal political instability, unscrupulous entrepreneurial operators, and a shortfall in commercial expertise and legal infrastructures. Beyond the region lie the threats of proprietorial and competing neighbours. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, which share the majority of the region's energy deposits, are landlocked and, therefore, dependent on their immediate neighbours for export. This makes them vulnerable to their neighbours' problems and, sometimes, to becoming a pawn in the rivalry of the larger powers adjacent to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The mercurial nature of the structural and political evolution of these states and of the surrounding regions makes formulation of long-term regional objectives by third-party policy-makers and Western businesses extremely difficult. Both stand to gain or lose significantly depending on whether they correctly predict the outcome of the region's many developing issues.
The benefits of developing and exploiting the Caspian region's oil resources are clear. First, the margin between world oil production capacity and world demand is projected to narrow in the next decade, leading to greater dependence on the Persian Gulf.(3) Central Asian oil could offer an important alternative, diversifying supply. In consequence, as a powerful geo-strategic key, oil offers the region's states the wherewithal to exploit their best opportunity for true independence in 70 years. Finally, with a possible 90-200bn barrels, the potential for national and commercial profit is substantial.(4)
In a wider context, Caspian oil is tied to, and will affect, issues central to current and developing international relations. These include:
*the political and economic future of Russia, and its behaviour towards neighbours and former Soviet republics;
*the political and economic future of Turkey;
*Iran's position in the region, and its relations with the West, with Russia, and with its other neighbours in the former Soviet Union;
*the strategic consequences of greater dependence on Persian Gulf oil;
*tension between Pakistan and India;
*China's future policy towards its neighbours;
*the potential spread of Islam to the region.
This paper focuses on the Caucasus and Central Asian region as an oil producer of considerable geo-strategic importance. Looking first at the region's history and the strategic role that oil has played since the nineteenth century, the paper goes on to identify the major locations of the region's oil and the factors affecting oil development, exploitation and export. These factors include: the political interests and policies of external parties (Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, Pakistan and the US, along with other developed countries); the Caspian Sea dispute - which, in a sense, encapsulates the nature of the intra-regional competition; the internal political problems of the region's states; and the technical and commercial impediments to implementing oil projects. After covering the largest oil development projects as specific cases, the paper discusses principal short- and long-term export options, including the complex issue of pipelines, and concludes by suggesting how the regional states, the US, Russia and other key actors could develop their policies to encourage stable exploitation of Caspian oil.
Major Oil Deposits
The largest oil deposits in the Caucasus and Central Asia are located in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Other deposits and smaller projects exist throughout the region, in Georgia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia. Estimates of proven and possible reserves across the entire area run to 200bn barrels of oil product. This includes about 30bn barrels of discovered reserves, approximately equal to those of the North Sea. Post-Soviet regional accessibility has led to substantially increased involvement on the part of Western businesses.
The more sophisticated technology and geophysical expertise they brought with them have produced reserve estimates much higher than official Soviet figures, which were based on explorations conducted 40 years ago, before the development of advanced methods for finding and exploiting deeper deposits. The region's strategic importance increases with the growth in its discovered oil.
The Caspian Sea area is particularly rich in oil deposits. Recent geophysical estimates indicate that the area holds far more than the Soviet estimate of 10bn barrels.(12) The sea's southern end has attracted most exploration because, until recently, the countries governing the region did not have access to the technology necessary to analyse the north, which suffers from poor infrastructure and bad weather. Additionally, the hydrocarbon reservoirs are very deep, and strong currents make geophysical work difficult.
Kazakhstan has much larger reserves than were estimated during the Soviet period. The 12 sedimentary basins in eastern and central Kazakhstan 'possess the characteristics of world-class basins and some have the potential to contain giant oil- and gas fields', in addition to those already discovered.(13) After Russia, Kazakhstan is considered the richest of the former Soviet republics in oil and gas resources, with more than 60bn barrels, according to industry analysts. Azerbaijan, a significant source of oil for more than a century, has the geophysical potential for much greater production than Soviet geologists thought. Turkmenistan, whose major resource wealth is natural gas, ranks third among the regional states in estimated oil reserves, although a recent domestic report, based on up-to-date geological studies, claims that the country's reserves may be as high as 46bn barrels.(14) Uzbekistan, with its 230 known oil- and gas fields, and Georgia also possess energy reserves, though not on the scale of their neighbors.(15) Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are thought to have minimal deposits.
It is therefore ironic that, newly independent, and possessing higher-than-expected oil reserves, all the relevant oil-producing countries of the region, except Uzbekistan, have experienced declining production levels against a background of poorly performing economies. This can be attributed to the difficulty in short-term capitalisation on discovered reserves. Further obstructions of regional oil-based economic growth are 'the fragmentation of the All-Union industry, the subsequent breakdown of business links between technologically-interdependent national enterprises, inadequate equipment and material supplies and lack of capital investments ... and huge payment arrears built up by insolvent downstream enterprises'.(16) While the Caucasian and Central Asian states are strong from the point of view of oil potential, they are afflicted by infrastructural weakness leading to slow economic growth, and a degree of international vulnerability.
http://www.treemedia.com/cfrlibrary/library/background/forsythe.html
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So again, these are merely estimates, but you can easily see why the United States would want to tap into the Caspian Sea and why the Controllers would do whatever it took to make sure that happens.
And while right now Mr. Conley it may be impossible to determine whether your 15,330,000,000,000 barrels of oil could be found there (And you never explained how you came up with that number), it has already been ESTIMATED that there are more than 200,000,000,000 barrels of oil in the area to be discovered. And the key word is Estimated. Which means that no one currently knows exactly much is actually out there.
