FIRST TURKMEN OIL SHIPPED WESTWARD.

The Mobil Corporation of the United States announced yesterday that the first westward shipment of Turkmen oil has reached Azerbaijan. The cargo was tanked across the Caspian Sea to Baku from the Turkmen port of Alaja. The experimental shipment of 4,700 tons originates from Turkmenistan’s onshore Nebit Dag fields, developed by a Mobil-led consortium under a concession arrangement. Mobil is the first major international oil company to have invested in Turkmenistan’s oilfields. (Business Wire, March 23) President Saparmurad Niazov is due in Washington shortly to discuss plans to export of Turkmen oil by a trans-Caspian pipeline to be laid to Baku, where it would branch into the planned Baku-Ceyhan line.

Tajikistan Reports Economic Growth in 1997.