Iran is even facing unlikely competition from Afghanistan as an export route for Central Asian oil and gas.

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Seventy-five miles from Bina Bawi runs Iraq's biggest export route, the Kirkuk-to-Ceyhan pipeline.

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This will be an important step towards aggregating Caspian output and enhancing the viability of the Ceyhan export route.

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But Azerbaijan is reluctant to be completely dependent on Russia and it's also keen on an export route via Georgia to Turkey.

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But the main export route for Azeri oil has yet to be decided and there'll be stiff competition for this and other pipeline routes out of the region.

BBC: Oil flows from the Caspian Sea

In western Canada Apache is also working with Chevron on developing the Kitimat LNG project to provide an export route for 50 billion cubic feet of gas reserves in that region.

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Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, told Elizabeth Jones, America's envoy to the Caspian, last week that the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline would provide an export route for early oil from Kashagan, where production is due to start in 2005.

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Other fears are that the Asian economic recovery will prove less muscular than hoped (the port of Seattle is a major export route to Asia) and that the Department of Justice may carry out its veiled threats to break up Microsoft.

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But, in its mid 19th-century heyday, it was a terminus of the caravan route from Lake Tanganyika, a major export point for slaves and ivory, and one of the largest ports between the city of Bagamoyo and Mombasa, Kenya.

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