Page 12 - FSUOGM Week 02 2023

FSUOGM POLICY FSUOGM

Turkmenistan: Mister Berdimuhamedov

goes to Beijing

TURKMENISTAN TURKMENISTAN’S president opened 2023 important priorities for Turkmenistan.
with a tribute mission to China. One is for a continued, or hastened even,
Turkmenistan is the As Serdar Berdimuhamedov noted before commitment to completion of a fourth strand, a
biggest pipeline gas his departure from Ashgabat, his state visit car- so-called Line D, to the Turkmenistan-China gas
supplier to China. ried important symbolic value since it fell on pipeline. In 2021, 34 bcm of gas were sent from
the exact 31st anniversary of the establishment Turkmenistan to China, which lends some idea
of diplomatic relations between Turkmenistan of what the existing infrastructure can manage.
and China. (Fully 43.2 bcm of gas were delivered through
After a six-and-a-half-hour flight to Beijing the Turkmenistan-China pipeline in 2022,
on January 5, Berdimuhamedov was driven in although that also includes unspecified volumes
a motorcade to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).
where North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was Line D would add around 30 bcm of capac-
put up in 2018. ity. And in another important detail, while the
The lodestar of the Sino-Turkmen relation- existing route runs through Uzbekistan and
ship at present is the joint declaration on the Kazakhstan, the fourth pipeline will run across
establishment of a strategic partnership signed Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan before
in September 2013. The stated mutual objective arriving in China’s troubled Xinjiang province.
of dialogue is to take “traditional cooperation to Well, Berdimuhamedov came away with a
a qualitatively new level that fully meets the pri- win on this front. In a joint statement with his
orities of socio-economic development and the Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the leaders
national interests of each of the parties.” committed to “accelerate … construction of Line
Such language is intended to convey the D of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline and
impression that the relationship extends – or will other major joint projects so as to intensify coop-
extend in future at any rate – to matters beyond eration in the gas industry.” Another pledge was
energy trade, although that is indisputably the that the partners will speed up the second stage
only area of major importance to both partners. of development of Galkynysh, the Turkmen gas
As Berdimuhamedov revealed in an article mega-field from where all this fuel is supposed
published in the state daily, Turkmenistan has to come. The Turkmens formally operate Galk-
to date supplied China with more than 350bn ynysh, although this is a convenient piece of
cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas. The fuel was fiction to create the impression Ashgabat can
delivered through the Turkmenistan-China gas run things independently, when in reality the
pipeline, which started operating in late 2009. cash and technology predominantly come from
“The gas pipeline has become an example of Beijing.
political responsibility, economic realism, and Russia may be looking upon all this with
the far-sighted approach of the leadership of the some degree of satisfaction.
two countries in solving global energy develop- In early February 2022, a few weeks before
ment issues,” Berdimuhamedov wrote, before he would embark on his disastrous invasion
praising Beijing for creating “international of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin
mechanisms for the reliable protection and secu- paid a visit to China. During that visit, Russia’s
rity of energy supplies.” Gazprom and China’s CNPC signed a 25-year
These remarks are more than honeyed obser- deal for the supply of 10 bcm of gas per year
vations of fact. They imply petitions on two from Russia’s Far East to China via the Power

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 02 11•January•2023