Turkmen trip

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov will travel to China this week, for the most important  foreign trip since his accession to power in February. The purpose of the visit is to speed up the implementation of a deal reached  last year, whereby China will buy 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Ashgabat for over 30 years. The gas is to be delivered via a new pipeline slated for completion in 2009. Yet , Ashgabat's ability to deliver the promised volumes of gas is suspect, given its long-term contracts with Russia.

Those contract have been reinforced and expanded into a series of agreements, signed in May, to upgrade the network of pipelines to Russia and build a Littoral Gas Pipeline from Turkmenistan to Russia, via Kazakhstan. That pipeline will take up all additional capacity that will come on stream in Turkmenistan's western fields. The secretive nature of late President Saparmurat Niyazov's regime makes estimating the country's reserves highly problematic and inaccurate. Yet even if Turkmenistan possessed the 45-100 trillion cubic metres of gas that its government claims to have, it would take massive investment in technology and infrastructure before it can honour the multiple agreements that it has taken on. So far no investment boom seems forthcoming.