When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, with the help of Pakistan and the Arabs, there were negotiations between the Americans and the Taliban, because the Americans were offering the Taliban international recognition if they were to allow the pipelines of Central Asia to be constructed.
Note that Turkmenistan is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural gas reserves, Kazahstan is one of the richest in terms of oil reserves, and Azerbaijan has descent amounts of both. Uzbekistan also has some descent reserves of natural gas.
However if the Taliban were to allow the pipelines of Central Asia to reach Pakistan and India, both the Arab and the Iranian exports would be hurt, and therefore Al-Qaeda sabotaged the negotiations with the bombings of the American embassies in 1998, and with the 9/11 attack in 2001. See “The Afghan Oil Pipeline and the US Negotiations with the Taliban”.
Therefore one goal of Al-Qaeda was to fight Iran in Afghanistan, and the other was to prevent the oil and natural gas of Central Asia to reach India and the Indian Ocean. Actually that second goal was a common goal for the Iranians and the Arabs, and it gave them plenty of space to cooperate against the Americans, because they both sell oil and gas to India and Pakistan.
Another goal of Al-Qaeda was to support the Pakistanis against India in Kashmir. Kashmir is a disputed region on the Pakistani-Indian borders, and If India was to take control of Kashmir the Indians could reach Central Asia bypassing Afghanistan, and they could export their merchandizes to Central Asia, while at the same time they could import oil and natural gas from Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. Obviously that would be very bad for the Arabs and the Pakistanis, and Al-Qaeda started fighting India at Kashmir. That would also hurt China, because China is now monopolizing central Asia commercially, and she can buy the resources of Central Asia at very low prices, because these countries have nowhere else to sell their products, except Russia and Iran, which are competitors in the oil and natural gas markets. For more details see “Al-Qaeda VS India”
https://iakal.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/al-qaeda-vs-india/
Map Kashmir
http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/jammuandkashmir/jammu-and-kashmir.jpg
Another goal of Al-Qaeda was to block the oil and natural gas of Africa from reaching Asia through Kenya and Tanzania. China is spending billions of dollars in Kenya, trying to make Kenya an export hub, in order to send African raw materials to China, with oil and natural gas being the most important ones of course. With its alliance with the Somalian terrorist group Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda is attacking Kenya and Tanzania. See “What is Al-Shabaab, and what does it want?”, July 2015.
Map
Al-Qaeda was also targeting the oil of North and Western Africa, through various terrorist groups it supported there. For example Al-Qaeda was supporting Boko Haram in Nigeria in order to attack the oil of Nigeria. See “Boko Haram's Bin Laden Connection”, May 2014
Philippines and Malaysia are oil and gas exporting countries too, and Al-Qaeda was attacking these countries too.
With black at the following map you can see the countries that mainly export oil and natural gas. Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia in Latin America, Russia and the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia in South East Asia, and Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Chad, Nigeria and Angola in Africa. You can see that the black parts of this map match with the Al-Qaeda map.
Map Exports by Country
Map Al-Qaeda in the World
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/images/map-al-qaeda-2015.gif
