Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, president of Turkmenistan, Central Asia's top gas exporter, will discuss a gas pipeline to India with the Indian government next week, a Turkmen government source told Reuters on Saturday. Berdymukhamedov will visit India on May 24-26.
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, valued at $4 billion, has long been discussed by governments and energy companies but instability in Afghanistan has so far made its construction impossible. "The issue of speeding up the TAPI project is likely to be raised in the high-level talks, among others," the source said.
The official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Pakistan and India had expressed interest in buying up to 70 billion cubic metres (bcm) of Turkmen gas a year, or twice as much as initially proposed under the draft TAPI project. Turkmenistan's Dovletabad gas field could serve as the main supplier, the source said.
Ex-Soviet Turkmenistan has stepped up efforts to diversify gas exports after a row with main consumer Russia last year which stopped buying Turkmen gas for nearly nine months as it sought to review the pricing agreement. Turkmenistan has since launched new pipelines to Iran and China.
The Turkmen government would start next month the construction of a 1,000-kilometre domestic pipeline linking rich gas fields in the east to planned export terminals in the west, it said in a separate announcement in the official media on Saturday. Last year, it advertised a tender offer for the project valued by some bidding companies at $4 billion. It was unclear why the government had chosen not to award the contract to any foreign firms.
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