In 1993, Chevron signed a 40-year pact with Kazakstan to exploit the Tengiz fields.
Despite wariness of its potent neighbor, Kazakstan has equally compelling reasons for the deal.
China's motives for facing down its Western opposition in Kazakstan are not hard to fathom.
The agreement provides for the construction of a three-thousand-kilometre pipeline from Kazakstan to the west of China.
But most analysts believe existing Russian pipelines still offer both Kazakstan and Azerbaijan the best routes to external markets.
Building a pipeline across the vast breadth of Kazakstan will provide tens of thousands of jobs in a country battered by severe unemployment.
Kazakstan and Turkmenistan also have huge energy reserves, and a hard-fought race is currently underway to develop them -- dubbed the new Great Game.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), a venture involving Western corporations along with Kazakstan, Russia and Oman, will carry oil west, north of the Caspian Sea.
"What surprised people was that they got both rather than either one, " says Ray Leonard, vice president of Amoco Kazakstan, which lost out despite aggressive lobbying.
In September, Beijing signed an oil deal with Kazakstan worth more than nine-billion dollars -- by far the biggest investment it's ever made in the former Soviet Union.
UoSat 12, an experimental micro-satellite that observes the Earth and demonstrates advanced communication and position finding technologies, was launched last year by a Russian rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan.
Kazakstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev greeted Chinese premier Li Peng in Almaty's gleaming new presidential palace, the occasion amounted to more than just another in a string of top-level visits between two increasingly cooperative neighbors.
In June, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) won a 60% stake in the privatization of Aktyubinsk (see map next page) in Kazakstan's northwest, a deal that got it two major fields -- Zhanazhol with reserves of 1 billion barrels and Kenkayak with 300 million.
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