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.

That July 25 deal didn’t include the Yoloten-Osman field.

And now, international energy companies are circling like sharks with the scent of blood in their nostrils. But the thing is, everyone’s got an ulterior motive. Russia wants to maintain its near-monopoly on all natural gas flowing into Europe. Europe wants to get out from under Russia’s energy dominance. And the U.S. wants to “put Russia in her place.”

Only China appears to be concerned with the actual fuel, and boy is there room for demand growth there! Most of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants… Somewhere in the neighborhood of 75%, in fact.

So it’s a four-way tug of war, and Turkmenistan stands to benefit hugely as the flag in the middle.

Keep an eye on European companies like Eni (E:NYSE), Total (TOT:NYSE), and StatoilHydro (STO:NYSE) among others. These guys already have a presence in the Caspian Sea region, in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.