Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, March 13 / Trend H.Hasanov /
Ukraine is interested in cooperation with Turkmenistan for the development of fuel-energy complex, including the development of production and transportation of Turkmen gas, the press-service of President Viktor Yanukovich said on Tuesday.
The information quoted Ukrainian leader during talks in expanded format as part of state visit of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov to Ukraine.
"We are very interested in the issues of joint work in terms of development of fuel and energy complex. The potential available in Ukraine can be fully used by Turkmenistan in the development oil production and transportation of natural gas," said Yanukovych.
In particular, he noted that Ukraine is ready to take part in projects to develop gas fields and provide the appropriate equipment of domestic production.
The head of Ukraine called interesting and important for the Ukrainian party participation in the construction of the pipeline on the territory of Turkmenistan "East-West", TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline, as well as in the construction of the second branch of Malay-Bagtyyarlyk pipeline (part of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline).
State Concerns Turkmengaz and Turkmenneftegazstroy have been charged to construct the internal pipeline "East-West" with capacity of 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year. At the same time, contract work is assigned to foreign companies. The implementation of the project will close in a single ring all the major gas fields in the country and bring their resources to the Caspian Sea. The next step would be laying Trans-Caspian pipeline to Azerbaijan for the supply to Europe, another option could be a project of the Caspian gas pipeline to Russia.
"East-West" is scheduled to be commissioned by mid 2015. Approximate cost of construction of the pipeline is more than $2 billion.
The base document for the promotion of TAPI project is Ashgabat interstate agreement of the States Parties on start of the practical implementation of the TAPI project signed at the end of 2010. The agenda includes questions of transit payment and security of the project.
The design capacity of the pipeline is up to 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
Buyers are gas companies of Pakistan and India. The project is promoted by the Asian Development Bank. Resource base, in addition to Dovletabad field, is the largest field in Turkmenistan, namely "Southern Yoloten - Osman" ("Galkynysh"). The length of the pipeline may reach 1735 kilometers. Russia has shown interest in this project at high level, the U.S. and Turkey support its implementation.
In addition, Turkmenistan has been working to increase the supply of gas to China via a pipeline which was commissioned in 2009. To this end, communication from primary sources are brough up to the main pipeline.