So, last night we reached the target depth for the 26″ hole section. This means there’ll be at least 2 days before we start drilling the next section. I am currently working in a field operated by Petronas Carigali in the Caspian Sea. I am a MWD/LWD Engineer. My job is to provide measurements and logs, to the directional driller (so that he can steer the well) and the geologist (so that he can perform further formation evaluation and make decisions regarding the well).

On this job, I am with a fellow engineer, Omar Kubatayev from Ashgabat. We had a long QnA talk after supper. Of course I did most of the asking, and he did the answering. The topic roamed around life in Turkmenistan. I just found out that despite the “rather-expensive-if-compared-to-Indonesia” soap, shampoo, toothpaste, etc; the price of gasoline here is 300TMM per liter. That’s like 1.6 cents or Rp.114 per liter. I tried to find the latest stat onlnie, and i found that out of 141 countries on the list, Turkmenistan sells the cheapest gasoline. Public transportation is of course directly affected by this. You can rent a cab for an hour for 40,000TMM (less than $2), and go anywhere you want. And buses, you can buy monthly tickets for 50TMM, or if you want to just go for one ride, you pay 5TMM :P.

The cheap fuel price is not the end of the public service provided by the government, here are some others:
1. If you go to the government-owned markets, you can get salt for free. Yep, you don’t have to buy it. I haven’t really tried this myself, but wow… it’s really free.
2. Electricity is also very cheap. I can’t remember the details but the government is subsidizing around 40KW per person per month. So if your house is registered for 2 people, then you will be discounted with 80KW from your electricity bill.
3. Water is free.
4. Telephone (landline), very cheap. If you’re just using local calls, you just need to pay about $5-6/ month, and you can “literally” talk for unlimited amount of time.

Now, this (according to Omar) justifies why most Turkmen make around US$100-200 per month. That is enough for you to be able to rent an apartment (not a fancy one of course), and afford to drive a car to work everyday.

2 weeks ago, we settled in to our newly-rented apartment in Ashgabat. My wife is now taking Russian lessons 3 times a week, and seems to be enjoying it. Our goal is to at least be able to speak conversational Russian, while we’re here; and at least be able to read the Cyrillic characters.