From The Boston Globe:
The flame from a looming oil tower illuminates the endless desert like a beacon of hope.
Oil and natural gas — lots of it — have been discovered beneath the sands near this industrial town in the center of China’s isolated western Xinjiang Province. As in Iran and Saudi Arabia at the turn of the last century, the energy boom in the region’s Tarim River basin and Taklamakan desert is focusing global attention on an area rich in history but forgotten by the modern world.
To satisfy the energy demands of its fast-growing coastal cities, China is building a 2,600-mile pipeline from here that will traverse the craggy steppes and sparsely populated villages of the old Silk Road, and run directly to Shanghai and possibly to Beijing. But the manner and terms under which the government is extracting resources from Xinjiang angers many of the province’s 7.5 million ethnic Uighur Muslims.
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