The subsea segment of the oil and gas industry is the by far the fastest growing industry in the world today. The global turnover is expected to grow by 30% from today towards 2011. This creates opportunites for companies that are not part of this booming oil anmd gas industry today..

Soviet estimates from the late 1970s placed Afghanistans proven and probable Oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels. Most Soviet assistance efforts after the mid-1970s were aimed at increasing Natural Gas production. Sporadic gas exploration continued through the mid-1980s. The last Soviet technical advisors left Afghanistan in 1988. After a brief hiatus, oil production at the Angot field was restarted in the early 1990s by local militias. Output levels, however, are thought to have been less than 300 barrels per day (bbl/d). Near Sar-i-Pol, the Soviets partially constructed a 10,000-bbl/d topping plant, which although undamaged by war, is thought by Western experts to be unsalvageable.
Petroleum products such as diesel, Gasoline, and jet fuel are imported, mainly from Pakistan and Uzbekistan, with limited volumes from Turkmenistan and Iran serving regional markets. Turkmenistan also has a petroleum product storage and distribution facility at Tagtabazar (Kushka – on the Turkmen side) near the Afghan border, which supplies northwestern Afghanistan.

Aside from acting as a transit center for other countries' oil and natural gas exports from the Caspian Sea, Iran has potentially significant Caspian reserves of its own, although only a small amount (0.1 billion barrels) has been proven as "recoverable." Currently, Iran has no oil or natural gas production in the Caspian region. In early 2004, a 3-D seismic survey of the southern Caspian was being conducted by Iran's Oil Survey Co.

The Iranian constitution prohibits the granting of petroleum rights on a concessionary basis or direct equity stake. However, the 1987 Petroleum Law permits the establishment of contracts between the Ministry of Petroleum, state companies and "local and foreign national persons and legal entities." Buyback contracts, for instance, are arrangements in which the contractor funds all investments, receives remuneration from NIOC in the form of an allocated production share, then transfers operation of the field to NIOC after the contract is completed.

Iran's economy relies heavily on Oil export revenues - around 80-90 percent of total export earnings and 40-50 percent of the government budget. Strong oil prices the past few years have boosted Iran's oil export revenues and helped Iran's economic situation. For 2004, Iran's real GDP increased by around 4.8 percent. For 2005 and 2006, real GDP is expected to grow by around 5.6 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively.

Since August 1996, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) has imposed mandatory and discretionary sanctions on non-U.S. companies that invest more than $20 million annually (lowered in August 1997 from $40 million) in the Iranian oil and natural gas sectors. On August 3, 2001, President Bush signed into law the ILSA Extension Act of 2001

In December 1975, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) was passed, officially establishing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as a reserve of up to 1 billion barrels. To store the reserve oil, the U.S. government acquired several salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. The first crude oil was delivered to the SPR in 1977 and stored at the West Hackberry storage site near Lake Charles, LA.

Twenty-five major U.S. energy companies reported overall net income (excluding unusual items) of $26.0 billion on revenues of $295.1 billion during the third quarter of 2005. This level of net income represented a 69 percent increase relative to the third quarter of 2004

According to EIA's 2004 Annual Report on U.S. oil and natural gas reserves, the United States had 21.4 billion barrels of proved oil reserves as of December 31, 2004, the eleventh highest in the world. These reserves were concentrated overwhelmingly (over 80 percent) in four states. Texas had 22 percent of total US oil reserves, Louisiana had 20 percent, Alaska 20 percent, and California 18 percent (note: all of these figures include onshore plus Federal and state offshore reserves). U.S. proven oil reserves have declined more than 17 percent since 1990, with the largest single-year decline (1.6 billion barrels) occurring in 1991.