Oil Industry Kazakhstan

The United States, Turkey and two Caspian Basin nations will announce agreement today on a plan to build a 1,240-mile pipeline that would tap rich oil fields in Central Asia while further weakening Russia's grip on a region once firmly in the Soviet orbit. The $2.4-billion project would carry up to 1 million barrels of oil a day from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, through Georgia before finally reaching Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean Sea, where it would be pumped aboard tankers.

Royal Dutch/Shell, Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and the government of Kazakhstan agreed to undertake a study on the feasibility of dual oil and gas pipelines from Kazakhstan, through the Caspian Sea and overland to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Waiting to clear customs at Baku's international airport, Texas-based courier Frank Woeste cradled a package of oil-drill brake pads and seals he had packed into a battered paper bag and hand-carried 9,500 miles from Houston--the only safe way to get the badly needed parts here quickly.

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev is in Washington to sign two agreements allowing Western companies to export oil from his country. One agreement, a $6-billion project of BG of Britain, Agip of Italy and Texaco Inc.

The lure of oil--as much as $4 trillion worth--is drawing the United States deep into distant and dangerous lands around the Caspian Sea. Although few Americans know the region, the prospect of enormous energy deposits is likely to make the Caspian as familiar a part of the world for the next generation of Americans as the Persian Gulf is for today's.

Texaco Inc. on Tuesday took a 20% stake in an oil and natural gas field in Kazakhstan being developed by Italy's ENI and Britain's BG, a move that could expand Texaco's reserves by about one-fifth.