Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, July 26 / Trend, H.Hasanov /
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov received German Ambassador to Turkmenistan, Helmut-Wolfgang Brett, who presented his credentials, Altyn Asir national TV channel reported on Thursday.
The diplomat conveyed greetings from German president Joachim Gauck and Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, emphasizing a "great importance attached by Germany to strengthening of traditional ties of friendship and brotherhood with independent neutral Turkmenistan," the report says.
It was also noted that "the establishment of long-term full-scale cooperation with dynamically developing Turkmen state ... is one of the strategic directions of foreign policy of Germany and the EU as a whole".
Berdimuhammadov expressed gratitude to Germany for its active position, which put forward an initiative to develop a special strategy of cooperation of EU with the Central Asian countries, including Turkmenistan, being the EU presiding country in due time.
During the meeting the sides exchanged views on prospects for cooperation, and they called fuel and energy sector, trade and economy, transport, urban development, as well as agriculture as priorities.
Germany is significantly represented in the local market by oil and gas companies which were previously carrying out such projects as the construction of installations for the production of lubricating oils and paraffin wax to clean up diesel fuel from the water at the oil refinery in Turkmenbashi and the construction of a gas compressor station in Korpeje.
There is cooperation with RWE, one of the leading traders of natural gas to European Union markets with which the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) on the development of offshore fields in the Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea and the transportation of Turkmen gas to Europe is signed.
In April 2009 the government of Turkmenistan signed a long term memorandum with the company, which is a shareholder of the gas pipeline project Nabucco. Hydrocarbon resources of the country can be connected to the transnational communication via the Caspian Sea, thanks to the construction of a small length of branches (300 kilometres) along the bottom of the sea to the coast of Azerbaijan.
Europe expects to diversify sources of gas consumption at the expense of Caspian resources, a significant part of which at this stage is ensured by Russia.
Ashgabat regularly asserts its right for direct access to Europe and until recently, this was closed by supplies through Russian pipelines and Iran. In late 2009 the country received access to a new alternative for the first time, thanks to the commissioning of the gas pipeline to China.
The delegation including the heads and specialists of a number of leading German companies engaged in business in the oil and gas industry and energy, transport and communications, trade and financial sectors, agro-industry as well as in several other sectors of the economy visited Ashgabat recently. Among them were such companies as Bauer Comp Holding AG, Lemken GmbH, John Deer International GmbH and ThyssenKrup AG and others.