The president of Turkmenistan ordered on Tuesday the allocation of $9.7 billion for the exploration of the country's South Eleten gas field, national television reported.

The president signed four decrees enabling the national Turkmengaz energy concern to sign deals on the exploration of the South Eleten gas field, which boasts about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, with South Korea's LG International Corp. and Hyundai Engineering, China's CNPC Chuanqing Drilling Engineering Company Limited and UAE's Petrofac International and Gulf Oil & Gas.

The oil- and gas-rich inland Caspian Sea area has been a source of disagreement between Turkmenistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Azerbaijan since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The countries have yet to agree on how to divide the seabed. The Caspian's oil and gas reserves, believed to be the world's third largest, have also been a source of rivalry between Russia, Iran and the West.

ASHGABAT, December 29 (RIA Novosti)