Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, May 25 / Trend H.Hasanov /
Exxon Company sees good prospects for fruitful joint activity in Turkmenistan, ExxonMobil General Manager Joerg Weller said in an interview with the Neytralniy Turkmenistan newspaper.
He said the opening of the Exxon Ashgabat office in October 2010 is very important.
"Our main goal is to operate successfully, providing the most innovative new technologies that are in the world. Today, the company's main direction in Turkmenistan is linked with the gas extraction and processing," he said.
Experts believe the return of ExxonMobil - the biggest U.S. company on natural gas production - to the Turkmen market may accelerate the development of hydrocarbon resources in the Turkmen section of the Caspian Sea and the access to Europe.
According to some estimates, this part of the Caspian Sea concentrates 11 billion tons of oil and 5.5 trillion cubic meters of gas, excluding already contracted blocks.
Recently, an announcement was made that soon agreements on the mining and exploration of oil and gas resources on the Turkmen shelf may be concluded with Chevron and Total. Not long before, other candidates such as TX Oil and ConocoPhilips were named.
To date, Western companies in Turkmenistan included the German RWE (Nabucco shareholder), which not only took up the exploration and commercial development of one of the blocs in the Caspian Sea, but was planning to sign an agreement for the sale of Turkmen gas by late 2010.
Turkmen experts say that more than 80 percent of offshore hydrocarbon reserves are located in the sediment at a depth of more than 3,000 meters, as well as in poorly studied areas of oil and gas, so still there is a high probability of finding significant new oil and gas fields. New perspectives are associated primarily with two major oil and gas basins - Middle Caspian and South Caspian.
Accelerated development of the Caspian Sea assumes strategic importance for Turkmenistan, which has been actively involved in the search for new markets, which today are Russia, China and Iran. Explored reserves of Caspian resources can bring Turkmenistan to European markets. To achieve this ultimate goal there are a number of options - a possibility of laying a gas pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan through the Caspian Sea or the construction of plants for gas compression and transportation of raw materials by ships.
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