Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, Aug.3 / Trend, H.Hasanov /
The Turkmen delegation's talks with UN official representatives to establish expert group, which will prepare international legal document on energy resources transit, will begin today in New York.
The talks will last till Aug.9.
According to the official Turkmen source, the delegation includes director of the State Agency for Management and Hydrocarbon Resources Use Director Yagshigeldi Kakayev and Deputy Foreign Minister Toyli Komekov.
According to BP's report, Turkmenistan ranks fourth for natural gas reserves in the world. Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov in one of his speeches said that "the UN has been and remains the only universal global structure, designed to provide political guarantees and legal legitimacy of the future system of security, stability and reliability of energy resources transportation to international markets."
Turkmenistan - one of the key players in the Caspian region in the sphere of natural gas supplies, on the background of global crisis states about its right to "diversify the Turkmen natural gas supply routes, as well as creating a reliable and stable system of the Turkmen energy resources to international markets."
Turkmenistan recently managed to get alternative routes in addition to traditional - to Russia. In December of 2009, a gas pipeline to China was commissioned; later an additional branch to Iran was launched. In early 2010, export to Russia, which was stopped in April 2009 due to an accident on the main gas pipeline, was resumed.
According to official Ashgabat, "Diversification of energy flows in the current circumstances, inclusion of new countries and regions in the geography of routes can show the necessary stability of the global economy, protect it from distortions and deformations."
Turkmenistan adheres to the opinion that the cost of fuel must be determined by the producing country. Ashgabat believes that all ideas to create international structures of natural gas producing countries in the form of some supra-national regulators, including in pricing issues, do not reach the result. In this context the only correct scheme of forming natural gas prices is a direct agreement on it between the seller and the buyer.
The projects discussed in Turkmenistan include: additional gas pipeline to Russia (the Caspian Sea - through Kazakhstan), Europe (Nabucco - on the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan) and India (the Trans-Afghan through Pakistan).