Revival of Revival in Turkmenistan's Era of Revival

flydime

Gas crater in Darvasa, Turkmenistan, 2010

The Turkmenistan state media has been going full blast with the news of even more reserves found in the already-huge South Yolotan deposits in the southern part of the country. The findings put Turkmenistan in the category of the country with the world's second largest gas reserves; previously it was listed fourth or fifth.

In light of the discovery of "super-gigantic zones of gas deposits," as the State News Agency of Turkmenistan calls them, and for the purpose of linking South Yolotan-Osman, Minara and adjacent fields into a single system, President Berdymukhamedov decreed that the linked reserves should be called "Galkynysh."

"Galkynysh" -- the Turkmen word for "revival" -- is what many things are called in Turkmenistan -- starting with the government-controlled civic movement turned out to perform chores for the state and cheer the president's initiatives, and moving on to various companies and products.

Berdymukhamedov calls the period of his rule "the era of new revival" -- so it seems fitting that this mega-gas deposit should get the same name.

The Chinese government has given Turkmenistan two soft loans of more than $8 billion to extract gas from South Yolotan and ship it in a pipeline via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China. That major investment seems to be the key reason why the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation and Turkmen ministries have already built the pipeline and got it pumping already -- unlike Western-backed projects.

A recent article from the State News Agency of Turkmenistan on the government website tacitly admits that Turkmenistan has a lot of aging infrastructure in the oil and gas industry by describing all the modernizing it has been doing. Turkmeneft, the state oil company, has been working diligently on the Korpej-Gurtguyi pipeline to Iran. Chinese and Ukrainian companies have been upgrading some 15 oil rigs on the fly, fighting sand and floods, restoring them to operation although they'd been close to being written off. At the Nebitdag and Barsagelmes fields, Finnish electronic pumps have been installed.

Of course, workers are overfulling their norms and targets have been met and exceeded for oil and gas production...