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bne July 2024 Opinion 71
PANNIER
Russia is pushing Turkmenistan out of the natural gas market
Bruce Pannier
Why is it that Turkmenistan has been unusually active in recent months trying to find buyers for its natural gas? Close observation suggests that it is a somewhat anxious response to Russia’s search to find new markets to replace lost gas revenues from European Union markets.
In the decades since ex-Soviet Turkmenistan became independent in 1991, the country has been rather passive in marketing and selling its gas. Turkmen officials became known for reminding potential customers that the country boasted trillions of cubic metres (tcm) of gas reserves, but then leaving it up to interested parties to initiate talks and make proposals.
All that has changed in 2024.
Since the start of March, Turkmen officials have been very actively and publicly advertising Turkmenistan as a gas supplier, naming Azerbaijan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan and the European Union as possible customers in the process.
Turkmenistan's gas network
Turkmenistan now appears so intent on selling more gas that when chairman of the country’s Halk Maslahaty, or People’s Council, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, visited Tajikistan in early April, he readily offered to sell it volumes. Yet cash-strapped Tajikistan has not even imported 1bn cubic metres (bcm) of
gas annually in more than three decades of independence.
Let’s dig deeper. What exactly is underpinning the apparent desperation?
Losing revenues
Turkmenistan is faced with losing nearly half of its current natural gas sales revenues – and those sales account for more than 80% of state revenues.
Endowed with the world’s fourth or fifth largest gas reserves (estimates range from 18 to 27 tcm), Turkmenistan’s potential as a gas supplier is well known. However, landlocked Turkmenistan’s terms for exporting its gas have essentially been, “You build a pipeline to the Turkmen border, and we’ll hook you up to our gas.”
If over the years Turkmenistan had more strenuously committed to some of the proposed pipelines, its gas sales prospects would look far rosier (Note: the CAC is here referred to as the Trans-Asia Gas Pipeline, or TAGP). / thepeoplesmap.net, S. Hedlund, GIS,CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
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