U.S. government sources expect Kashagan to contain as much as 6.8 billion tons, making it the biggest find in the world in the last 20 years. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said he hopes to turn out as much oil as Saudi Arabia by the year 2015. The United States sees the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline as a tool to lessen Russian influence over the former Soviet republics. The monopoly is a legacy of the economic infrastructure of the Soviet era an infrastructure which sought to tie less advanced areas of the Soviet Union with the less developed regions. Recent events following Russia's March presidential election have already revealed a markedly more demanding tone from the new Kremlin administration toward the former Soviet republics.
Pipelines run from the south to the north, to Russian ports in the northern Black Sea.
Putin has made the control of the Caucasus and greater influence in Central Asia one of his highest priorities. The newly elected president has taken great pains to frequently visit the former Soviet republics to lobby for their support to negotiate oil transport through Russia. Furthermore, Russia launched its second war in Chechnya last fall in a much more fierce, united, and determined campaign than the first one in 1994-1996. A revival of Soviet ties is viewed by the United States as anathema to its post-Soviet efforts to promote market mechanisms and stable democracies. Azerbaijan has eagerly pursued membership in the Council of Europe for the past few years, and was finally admitted last month.