ASTANA — For decades, the geopolitics of energy was largely understood through a familiar map of resource abundance: the Persian Gulf held vast oil and gas reserves, Russia was a major supplier to Europe, and countries such as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan were important producers whose influence depended largely on how much they could extract and sell.
But as wars, sanctions and geopolitical competition increasingly disrupt established trade routes, that logic is changing. The strategic value of an energy resource is no longer determined only by what lies beneath the ground, but increasingly by whether it can reach international markets, through which route and with how many alternatives if that route is disrupted.
For oil and gas producers in Central Asia, the answer has become increasingly consequential. Kazakhstan remains heavily dependent on routes that cross Russian territory, Turkmenistan has enormous gas reserves but limited export options, and Uzbekistan is looking increasingly southward toward Afghanistan as it seeks additional connections to international markets.
At the same time, China is building multiple routes into Eurasia as it seeks to reduce its exposure to maritime chokepoints and dependence on any single corridor. When energy routes become strategic assets Abzal Narymbetov, an oil and gas industry expert, framed the broader issue through the structure of global energy markets.
While the United States and China dominate many categories of energy production, countries with large exportable surpluses are more narrowly concentrated, particularly in the Middle East, where reserves are vast relative to population and domestic consumption.
Abzal Narymbetov, an oil and gas industry expert. “The Middle East is the only region that can actually supply oil and gas to growing China and India’s needs,” Narymbetov said, noting that the central vulnerability lies in the routes through which those supplies move.
For him, the Strait of Hormuz is the clearest example of how geography can turn an energy question into a strategic one. “When you have a bottleneck like the Hormuz, then you will have the next road is only the inland,” he added. The point is not that continental routes can replace maritime energy flows.
They cannot, at least not on the same scale. Rather, the geopolitical value of inland routes rises when maritime routes become vulnerable, and that is precisely why China’s expanding network of pipelines and rail connections across the Eurasian landmass matters.
Narymbetov said that China has little choice but to develop those alternatives because its energy needs cannot simply be reduced by changing transport patterns. “China needs to develop inland routes, because there is no way that you will replace the oil and gas consumption that China now needs,” he said.
That logic places Central Asia in a strategically different position from the one it occupied when energy was discussed primarily in terms of exports and revenues. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are no longer simply producers supplying global demand; their infrastructure and geographic location are becoming part of a wider effort to make energy systems less vulnerable to geopolitical disruption.