Russian Firm to Build Natural Gas Facilities in Turkmenistan

ASHGABAT. Feb 23 (Interfax) – A Russian company will build a natural gas pipeline, a gas purification and dehydration facility and a gas measuring station in Turkmenistan, Turkmen newspapers said on Saturday.

The projects are based on a 395.45-million-euro contract that Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow permitted Turkmen state gas company Turkmengaz to sign with Russia’s Stroytransgaz company.

The 1,420-millimeter 188-kilometer Malai-Bagtiyarlyk pipeline to be laid by Stroytransgaz would be the Turkmen section of a 7,000- kilometer pipeline through which Turkmenistan is to export gas to China under a 2006 agreement.

The accord stipulates that China receive 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year for 30 years beginning with 2009.

The agreement was signed by then Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

A 530-kilometer section of the pipeline would pass through Uzbekistan and a 1,300-kilometer one through Kazakhstan. The Chinese section would be 4,500 kilometers long.

Gas for the pipeline would come from right-bank fields along the Amudarya river.

Of the annual amount of 30 billion cubic meters of gas, 17 billion would come from newly explored fields and the rest from purification facilities to be built at Bagtiyarlyk, a major gas condensate field.

In summer 2007, Turkmenistan issued the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with documents that include the first gas prospecting and gas production license to have been granted to a foreign company.

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