Turkmen, Azeri and Turkish Leaders to Talk Pipelines

The Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov is to host a meeting with his Azerbaijani and Turkish counterparts, Ilham Aliev and Abdullah Gul, in the port city of Turkmenbashi on November 29.



The three leaders will discuss the future of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, TCGP, which would take Turkmen gas to Azerbaijan. NBCentralAsia energy experts say the talks will focus on determining whether Turkmenistan will be able to commit the required amount of gas to make TCGP a commercially viable proposition.



TCGP would run under the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, and would link up with the Nabucco pipeline which will run through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria. The route would bypass Russia entirely.



For the moment, there is no certainty that Turkmenistan would supply the desired amount of gas for TCGP.



At a meeting with the European Union’s foreign relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner in April, Berdymuhammedov indicated he was prepared to take part in the Nabucco project, promised gas would be made available, and set out his policy of having multiple export routes.



However, it remains far from clear how much gas the Turkmen would earmark for TCGP and thus Nabucco.



NBCentralAsia experts note that the country has already signed supply contracts with Russia, which currently has a near-monopoly hold over Turkmen gas exports, and also with China. A new pipeline running from Turkmenistan to China is due to come into operation as early as next year.



“The Azerbaijani and Turkish leaders have to demand that the Turkmen president offer specific guarantees that the pipeline will be filled, by revealing accurate official data on reserves and [other supply] commitments,” said Annadurdy Hadjiev, a Turkmen economic analyst based in Bulgaria. “Otherwise the Nabucco project will be difficult to implement.”