Central Asia seeks to bypass Russian routes

Leaders from Astana and Warsaw recently meet to discuss gas exports to Poland, while Ashgabat held negotiations on the delivery of Turkmen gas to Europe via Baku and Tbilisi.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev met with his Polish counterpart, Lech Kaczynski, to hold talks on gas exports to Poland.

Kiev and Minsk, meanwhile, are considering reviving the construction of the Odessa-Brody-Plotsk pipeline to receive Caspian oil.

Gazprom chief Alexei Miller and the late Turkmen president, Saparmurat Niyazov, had secured an agreement in Ashgabat last September whereby Gazprom was supposed to purchase 162 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan in 2006 to 2009 at $100 per thousand cubic meters.

The agreement strengthened Russia's confidence as being the only importer and shipper of Turkmen gas abroad. The late president of Turkmenistan also assured Miller then that all Turkmen gas would be turned over to Russia and that Ashgabat did not care what Europe and the US were speculating about "trans-Caspian" pipelines. Industry experts thought that Turkmenistan lacked funds to construct a new pipeline bypassing the territory of Russia.

But when Nazarbayev died, potential investors made frequent visits to Ashgabat, according to local reports.

After energy executives of the UK-Greek-Azerbaijani consortium visited Ashgabat earlier this month, Turkmenistan expressed an interest in the trans-Caspian pipeline system bypassing Russia.

"We need free access to the gas fields in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Caspian region. Russia is in our way," Pyotr Woznjak, minister of the Polish Cabinet was cited as saying.

While Moscow retains control over prices and deliveries from the former Soviet central Asia, the European Union and the US are working with central Asian countries to find ways to transport gas to Europe via the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Black Sea, and Ukraine while bypassing Russia. UPI

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