The Associated Press
August 30, 2008 - 4:37 a.m.
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan - Energy-rich Turkmenistan signed a mete out to boost its annual delivery of natural gas supplies to China to 40 billion cubic meters, an increase of 10 billion cubic meters over the previously agreed whole.
Under the deal Friday, China could start receiving elastic fluid deliveries from the Central Asian nation by late 2009.
Construction of a pipeline that is meant to eventually put forth from Turkmenistan to China’s northwestern Xinjiang region via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan is slated for completion next year.
Chinese premier Hu Jintao visited Turkmenistan to fastening the agreement with his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, at a ceremony in the capital.
“Our divide efforts are clearly palpable in the transnational pipeline joining Turkmenistan by China along the banks of the Amu Darya river, where Turkmen specialists have discovered a gigantic oil and gas field,” Berdymukhamedov said.
Hu said every effort would be made to speed up the pace of construction work on the pipeline.
China National Petroleum Corporation last year won the license to explore and evolve the Bagtyarlyk field near the Turkmen confine by Uzbekistan, which the government estimates could hold up to 1.3 trillion cubic meters of gas.
Last year, Turkmenistan, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement to build a gas pipeline along the Caspian coast with an annual capacity for 20 billion cubic meters. In July, Berdymukhamedov and the head of Russian gas monopoly OAO Gazprom, Alexei Miller, agreed to increase capacity to 30 billion cubic meters.
The United States and the European Union acquire also pushed for fabric a trans-Caspian pipeline that would carry Turkmen natural gas to Azerbaijan, Turkey and then to Western markets bypassing Russia.
According to official figures, Turkmenistan produces all over 70 billion cubic meters of gas annually. It exports 50 billion cubic meters per year to Russian while burdened with a 25-year contract. An additional eight billion cubic meters are sold annually to Iran.
Turkmenistan estimates its gas reserves at more than 20 trillion cubic meters, but it has never provided independent verification. The BP World Energy Statistics puts Turkmen gas reserves at touching 2.9 trillion cubic meters, ranking them as the 13th largest in the world.
The government in April announced it had commissioned a British consulting firm Gaffney, Cline and Associates Inc., to audit the size of the country’s aeriform fluid fields.