Baku, Azerbaijan, June 4
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) may consider financing the further development of Turkmenistan’s Galkynysh gas field, ADB country director in Turkmenistan Ahmet Cevdet Denizer told Trend.
“The government has not approached ADB to finance the aforementioned gas field. If they do ADB may consider it,” he said.
Denizer noted that to date, the bank has financed only one project, the North-South Railway project in Turkmenistan, which is now closed. The volume of loan issued for this project stood at $125 million, he added.
Further, Denizer said ADB is working on the preparation of a financial sector project in Turkmenistan to help small and medium enterprises and on an energy project to improve the functioning of national grid.
“We do not have a firm timeline yet,” he concluded.
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has ordered to intensify work to attract foreign investment for the development of the Galkynysh gas field.
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, construction of which began in December 2015, originates from this source of raw materials. The head of state instructed to speed up the implementation of the project of construction of this transnational energy bridge.
Galkynysh is the second largest gas field in the world and is already one of the raw sources of Turkmen gas supplies to China. According to independent audit, the reserves of Galkynysh field together with the Yashlar and Garkel fields total to 27.4 trillion cubic meters of gas.
In July 2017, it was announced that in the near future it is planned to start the third stage of the development of Galkynysh field, which will increase the production capacity by another 33 billion cubic meters of commercial gas per year with the expectation of supplies to South Asia.
To date, production facilities of the first stage, with a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters of commercial gas per year, have been commissioned here, and in 2014 the second stage with a similar capacity was launched.
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