Russia has swiftly moved to consolidate the gains of Putin's energy summit with his Kazakh and Turkmen counterparts on May 11-13. The trilateral Central Asian summit had agreed, among other things, to modernize and enlarge the gas capacity of the Soviet-era pipelines that run from Central Asia to Russia; to increase the volume of gas exports from Central Asia via Russian pipelines; to deepen further Russian participation in developing Turkmenistan's gas reserves; and to commit long-term Kazakh oil exports to Russian pipelines.

As per the assessment by an American area specialist, "Western energy policies in Eurasia collapsed in May 2007. During this month, Russia seems to have conclusively defeated all Western-backed projects to bring oil and gas from Central Asia directly to Europe ...

[link to www.atimes.com]