JUST TWO MONTHS ago, the name Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov would have seemed a desperate attempt to win a Scrabble contest. He is now the president of Turkmenistan, a Central Asian republic renowned for it’s largely untapped energy resources and human rights repression. The California-sized nation of five million people has Iran and Afghanistan for southern neighbors, while nearby Russia dominates its economic prospects. How a largely unknown former health minister (a dentist by profession) maneuvers this environment will require true gamesmanship.

At stake is developing what’s considered to be one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. Estimates range from a conservative 2.9 trillion cubic meters lying underneath Turkmenistan’s terrain to a whopping 20 trillion cubic meters, which would make it a worthy alternative to Russia’s reserves. Not only would another energy option help European consumers who are overly dependent on Russian supply and pricing jolts, but it could be critical to meeting a growing Asian demand as well.