Turkmenistan has appointed US and British consultants as independent auditors of its oil and gas reserves, the government said on Monday, a move that may help revive plans for a $3.3 billion gas pipeline to Pakistan. According to Turkmen estimates, its Dauletabad field alone contains 1.7 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, which would make it the world's fourth largest field, but Pakistan and other project partners want to make sure of that. A government official told Reuters that President Saparmurat Niyazov had appointed US-based consultants DeGoyler and MacNaughton and Gaffney, Cline & Associates, a British consultancy, to conduct the audit.
They have completed a survey of the south-east, including the Dauletabad field, but have yet to publish the results. "The companies have already worked in the south-east. Now they will be engaged in studying the rest of the country's potential resources including the Caspian," the official said.
The survey of the Caspian could prove controversial as some of Turkmenistan's territories there are disputed. The official gave no time-frame for the audit but said Niyazov had pledged it would be transparent.
The authoritarian Central Asian state produces just under 60 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year and exports two-thirds of that, mostly through an ex-Soviet pipeline that runs to Russia and for which it gets below market prices.
Pakistan has said it wants to see new estimates of reserves at Dauletabad before deciding on the project to run a pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan. The long-stalled plan has been held up by the US bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 and security concerns, which Afghanistan says it has now overcome.