Turkmenistan: Will Ukraine Buy Turkmen Gas Despite Russian Objections?
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych traveled to Turkmenistan for two days to boost bilateral economic ties and discuss natural-gas deliveries, the
Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
The Ukrainian leader's visit followed a flurry of diplomatic activity earlier this summer in preparation for the trip, in which Ukrainian officials let it be known that they were interested in purchasing Turkmen gas. This may have been merely a threat to strengthen Kyiv's hand in its bargaining with Russia, which has
refused to reduce its prices.
Trade has fallen off between Ukraine and Turkmenistan, dropping from $4 billion to just $400 million last year, RFE/RL reported. Most of the loss was due to the end of gas deliveries. Analysts are skeptical that they will resume.
The two leaders spoke in the usual platitudes, and while they signed various trade and cultural agreements, no specific announcement was made about gas plans.
Ihor Semyvolos, director of the Kyiv-based Middle East Research Center, told RFE/RL that Ukraine will now find it has to compete with United States, Russia, China, and the European Union Turkmenistan's gas supplies.
While Ukrainian Energy and Coal Minister Yuriy Boyko reiterated that Ukraine is ready to resume buying Turkmen gas, there's still the problem of transit across Russia. Gazprom, which continues to have strained relations with Ashgabat and has reduced its own purchases, has refused in the past to allow Turkmen gas to go across Russian territory, in competition with its own sales to Ukraine.
Mykhaylo Honchar, energy issues program director at the Homos Center in Kyiv, told RFE/RL that it is currently impossible for Ukraine to establish a diversified gas-supply system as the only gas-export pipelines from Central Asia transit Russia.
Yet according to an unidentified source in the Ukrainian delegation cited in a report from the opposition web site gundogar.org on September 13, Turkmenistan is prepared to sell Ukraine its gas for $200 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) -- $5 less per tcm than it agreed to charge China three years ago.
According to gundogar.org's source, Ashgabat is ready to give Kyiv other breaks "including having Ukraine drill for gas itself on the Turkmen [Caspian] shelf." Ukraine is already being offered up to 5 billion cubic meters, said the source.
There's no pipeline to pump this gas, however, although another Ukrainian official said an alternative one may be built by 2015, and the gas to be pumped would cost $270 per tcm, the news site BSM.ru reported. There are also plans to build a terminal to ship liquefied natural gas, but no earlier than 2015, the official said.
So it remains to be seen whether Kyiv will make a deal with Gazprom and then drop Turkmenistan, or whether it will maneuver around Russia's objections to resume an agreement with Ashgabat -- risking a repeat of Russia's past politically-motivated gas delivery cut-offs.
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