Natural resources are one of the most important factors that allow a particular region to develop. In the case of Central Asia, these resources are abundant, but still quite unexplored. For example, the area has roughly 3% of the world's oil, 4% of the world's coal, and 15% of the world's uranium. It also has large reserves of natural gas, zinc, lead, chromite, copper, iron ore, gold and manganese. These are mostly located in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Most of these resources end up in Europe, the US, Russia, China and India. This is mostly due to the fact that the region is sparsely populated.
