Turkmenistan: Which Way Is Out for Ashgabat?

The more President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov speaks, the more he seems to muddy the waters of the Caspian Basin energy picture. Speaking March 11 at the Economic Cooperation Organization summit in Tehran, Berdymukhamedov appeared to deal a potentially fatal blow to the long-planned Nabucco pipeline route. But the very next day, comments attributed to the Turkmen leader seemed to give Nabucco a new lease on life.

Nabucco's viability is widely seen as linked to Berdymukhamedov's willingness to export gas via a trans-Caspian route that would evade Russia. On March 11, though, Turkmenistan, along with Kazakhstan, reaffirmed its commitment to a Russian pipeline expansion, dubbed Prikaspiisky. If the Prikaspiisky expansion proceeds, there would likely not be enough export volume leftover to make Nabucco profitable. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Later at the ECO summit, Berdymukhamedov touted the organization's potential to export energy in four directions. These comments leave open the possibility that Nabucco may find the suppliers that it needs.

"The combined resource potential of [the members of the] Economic Cooperation Organization and particularly our geographic location means our countries have the prerequisites to become the global center for the extraction and transit of energy materials by building pipeline routes [that go] in all four geographic directions," the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Berdymukhamedov in a report distributed on March 12.

The Economic Cooperation Organization includes Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.