Black Sea–Caspian Steppe The Manych Depression is not much more than 65 feet above sea level and the area around Astrakhan and part of Kalmykia is below sea level. Rivers: Through the center runs the northwest-tending Kuma-Manych Depression. This was once a strait connecting the Black and Caspian Seas and is now marked by the Manych River which is basically a chain of lakes. It will probably be the route of the Eurasia Canal if that great engineering work is ever built. In the south the rivers that flow north from the Caucasus are caught by the west-flowing Kuban River and the east-flowing
Caspian Sea around 4 million bbl/day. Additionally, Iran has an estimated 988.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, around 16 percent of total world reserves, which makes it to play a key role in the global energy security equation. Russia's economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it second leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The Caspian Sea region presently is a significant, but not major, supplier of crude oil to world markets, based