Afghans to Sign up for Turkmen Energy

Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai will pay an official visit to Turkmenistan on July 5-6, at the personal invitation from President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov.



The two sides are expected to sign a package of bilateral agreements including energy cooperation, and giving the go-ahead for a trans-Afghan gas pipeline. The pipeline would be over 1,000 kilometres long and would supply an estimated 15 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas to Pakistan every year.



The presidents will also discuss the possibility of laying new power transmission lines to double the amount of electricity that Turkmenistan exports to Afghanistan.



Afghanistan has been a major consumer of Turkmen electricity for four years, paying the cut-price rate of two US cents per kilowatt/hour. Ashgabat recently wrote off almost all of its neighbour’s four-million dollar debt for past supplies.