News from Asia Times Online has a tiny Caspian county rivalling Mother Russia for regional energy dominance.

In an announcement on October 13, British consultant group Gaffney, Cline & Associates valued Turkmenistan’s natural gas resources for its new Yoloten-Osman field at 4 trillion cubic meters… at least.

On the high side of the estimate, this field could contain as much as 14 trillion cubic meters.

The U.S. consumes 604 billion cubic meters a year, so this is a massive find! It’s also five times the size of Turkmenistan’s previous favorite field.

This new reserve estimate came as a big shock to Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP:Russia), who’d picked up a giant contract with Turkmenistan’s state-owned energy company, Turkmengaz. The contract, signed on July 25 earlier this year, meant Turkmenistan would export 50 billion cubic meters a year to Russia through 2009. Gazprom needs these exports to meet its contracts with Europe, as the company exports about two-thirds of its total production.

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I spent my first day here in Austria wandering around the old Schönbrunn Palace, where the family of the old imperial family lived. The grounds were beautiful. The world’s oldest zoo is also there, and I have to say, things are looking pretty busy over here, dispite what some “recessionists” would say.

In fact, both legs of my flight were full, and the zoo and palace were crowded with tours, and today is Sunday!

Now, on my taxi ride from the airport to the hotel, I passed a power plant, a massive one. OMV is the largest utilities provider in the country, so it wasn’t a surprise to see its name plastered on the side of a building.

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On Monday, September 1, 2008, the lights in Caracas and eight surrounding states in Venezuela went out.

An 800,000-volt transmission line failed, and five gigawatts of power were eliminated from the powergrid. A press report said that Zulia, the Venezuelan state a the heart of the oil industry, was “the state most affected by the blackout.”

Now, the national power company, Corpoelec says it will spend $13 billion in power investments for thermo and hydro plants. More than 30 new projects are expected to be funded.

Transmission and distribution networks will account for roughly half the number of new projects. But there are some rumors of diversification in the OPEC member’s power generation. In fact, Menpet, Venezuela’s energy and oil ministry, has installed 779 solar panel systems and is planning a solar panel factory.

And last year, Chavez said he would use oil money to build an offshore wind farm on the Caribbean coast.

Turns out, Venezuela is not alone when it comes to renewable energy investments…

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Ever see that show on The Learning Channel called Trading Spaces? It has two neighbors swap houses for a couple days to remodel each other’s rooms. There have been some surprising results, from an all black room (which was not what the owners had in mind) to wonderfully tasteful decor.

That’s why it’ll be interesting when two countries swap sectors: the UK could be the next oil frontier and Dubai could be the next major hotel owner in Europe.

Let’s start with the more unusual of the two…

The UK has been beholden to imported natural gas since 2004, and could be a net importer of oil by 2010 once the North Sea reserves really begin to run dry. North Sea oil accounts for 98.5% of UK production. Onshore oil fields produce only 24,000 barrels of oil a day.

To give you an idea of just how little that amount is, 24,000 barrels of oil is less than two-minute’s worth of U.S. oil consumption.

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