The fear is that once private oil companies start building their own export routes for oil, the state will have lost all leverage over them.

The industry's favored export route for Caspian oil is through Iran.

An interactive map shows all current export routes.

As these questions are settled, the geography of the export routes that result will have economic and political ramifications for decades.

In 2010 Ashgabat started a policy of diversifying export routes for its raw materials.

As a result, oil companies scurried to secure alternative export routes.

With crude output expected to grow another 40 percent or more by 2012, Russia's oil companies say that new export routes are urgently needed.

Russia cannot continue to fan the flames of antagonism between itself and the peoples around its most important export route.

To do that, they must have an export route that Russia does not control.

Yet government officials have also said the country will siphon gas from the export routes if necessary.