Will Turkmenistan ship gas to EU via Azerbaijan? Expert opinions on Caliber.Az

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu said during a recent visit to Ashgabat that prospects for delivering Turkmen gas to the European Union via Azerbaijan were good.

"Early in my career, I had the opportunity to be a chargé d'affaires ad interim at our embassy in Baku. And we, the Azerbaijani side, the EU, the US, and Turkmenistan, talked about the possibility of supplying Turkmen gas to Europe. It would be very good for the Turkmen government to think about this project now," the US foreign policy assistant said, referring to the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP), which is part of the Southern Gas Corridor project designed to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe.

The better it is for the Turkmen people, the more opportunities the country has to ship gas to various destinations, Lu said.

The initiative is old and good, but there are a few questions. First, how interested is the Turkmen leadership itself in supplying its gas to Europe via Azerbaijan?

Secondly, if so, what is needed for this? Is it necessary to lay the Trans-Caspian bottom gas pipeline between the two shores (because this is a separate and impressive expense item), or can the raw materials be transported overland, by sea?

Thirdly, will other external forces - Russia, and China - not oppose such a solution? Are they capable of pressuring Ashgabat to give up this route?

Caliber.Az asked foreign experts to answer these questions.

"Of course, Turkmenistan will welcome any opportunity to sell any additional volumes of its gas in any direction", said Turkmen analyst Farid Tukhbatullin, director of the news agency "Chronicle of Turkmenistan".

As for a specific route through Azerbaijan to Europe, some efforts are being made in this direction. For example, there is an agreement under which 1.5-2 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas are delivered to Azerbaijan annually by swap through Iran, he said.

In January 2021, the presidents of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan signed a memorandum of understanding between the two countries to jointly explore and develop the Dostluk hydrocarbon field in the Caspian Sea. The field was formerly called Serdar by the Turkmens and Kapaz by the Azerbaijanis. The Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR recently announced plans to open a representative office in Turkmenistan. The interests of the US, Europe, and Azerbaijan in transporting Turkmen gas to the European market overlap, our interviewee believes.

"At the same time, it is for sure impossible to talk about laying a pipeline on the bottom of the Caspian Sea to transport large volumes of gas. Russia opposes it by putting political pressure on Turkmenistan. Such a pipeline is not in its interests. It has hinted at the project's environmental risks.

Berdymukhamedov senior spent several days in Russia last week. There they were probably discussing gas and relations between the two countries in general against the background of the war in Ukraine. And China is only interested in ensuring that gas volumes from Turkmenistan don't decrease", Tukhbatullin said.

Russian expert Vladislav Inozemtsev, head of the Centre for Post-Industrial Society Studies and Doctor of Economics, believes that the idea of supplying Turkmen gas to Europe is absolutely correct.

"At one time, in the 1990s and sometime before 2009, such supplies went through Russia and accounted for about more than a quarter of all Russian gas exports to the EU. Turkmenistan, therefore, has the potential to become an important source of gas supply to Europe. Either through Iran, although this is unlikely, or through the Trans-Caspian pipeline. I think it is not too difficult to build such a pipeline. Yes, it is a big expense, but we have seen very well that these technologies have been proven by the construction of the Turkish South Stream in the Black Sea and the construction of a pipeline in the Baltic Sea. Moreover, there are already several projects, oddly enough, for a bridge across the Caspian Sea in areas where there are large underwater oil and gas deposits, which could help to actually get the raw materials from there and immediately pump them into the pipe. That is, there are all sorts of options and possibilities," Inozemtsev said.

As for Europe, it would certainly be interested in this because it's an important element of pressure on Russia, the economist believes.

In the case of Turkmenistan, this is certainly a very advantageous offer for it, because the price of gas in China is many times lower today than in Europe. Accordingly, for Ashgabat, it will be a great additional income, which will allow further development of its oil and gas industry.

"So I think the pressure from China and Russia will clearly be a secondary factor here because China of course has more influence over Turkmenistan than Russia, but one way or another, there is so much at stake that this decision could well be made in Europe's favour. Especially as European companies could develop Turkmenistan's fields, as they have done in Kazakhstan, for example, with great success. So I think the project itself looks very attractive, but it is more a question of what conditions the EU will offer. For example, to what extent is it possible to finance the gas pipeline across the Caspian Sea from Brussels? But this problem is not so much connected with the confrontation between China and Russia, they do not have a decisive vote in this case," Inozemtsev said.

In his turn, Ukrainian energy expert, president of the Strategy ХХI Globalist Centre, and editor-in-chief of the Black Sea Security magazine Mykhailo Honchar said that the idea is really not new, dating back to the 1990s.

"But, as they say, it is still there. I suppose there will be no special progress, even though Turkmenistan is interested in diversifying its gas exports. The European Union is now more interested than ever in getting gas from non-Russian sources via non-Russian routes. Ankara is interested in bringing all gas from the Turkic world to Türkiye and through Türkiye to Europe.

The project of a less than 200km-long pipeline across the Caspian Sea is not that expensive and would not preclude the idea of rerouting some of Turkmenistan's vast gas resources to Europe via the Caspian, South Caucasus, and Türkiye. The maritime transport of gas would be much more expensive because it would involve liquefaction on the eastern shore of the Caspian and regasification on the western shore for further transport by pipeline towards Europe.

However, there are those who are "against" and they have so far clearly been stronger than those who are "for". Russia is against it because Turkmen gas is another competitor for Gazprom's supplies to the EU market. China, which since the mid-noughties has viewed Turkmenistan as a large gas reservoir for the growing needs of its economy and now relies even more heavily on Central Asian gas, is also against it. It is opposed by Azerbaijan, which formally does not object and even verbally supports the TransCaspian project from time to time, but in fact does not support it, because one way or another Turkmen gas will be a competitor to Azerbaijani gas in the EU market," the expert said.

The US position plays an important role in geopolitical support for any energy production and export projects. If not for the American support of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline projects in the 90th, the Caspian oil would have remained a thing in itself. So would Shah Deniz gas and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline, Honchar notes. The same, by the way, applies to the Kazakh oil projects.

But now is not the 90s of the XX century, but the 20s of the XXI century. However, if the US in its policy in the Caspian and Central Asian region returns to actively supporting production and transport projects based on its geostrategic interest in containing China and acts together with the European Union, Turkmen gas could become a reality on the EU market.

"What is needed first for this is the defeat of Russia in its war in Europe against Ukraine. Ukraine's armed forces are precisely engaged in the task of not only expelling the aggressor from Ukrainian territory but also inflicting a fatal military defeat on it so that in the future it won't have the scruples to pry into someone else's territory. This will also weaken the Kremlin's influence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, which will also provide greater freedom of action to the countries of the region in the implementation of projects that Russia has objected to. Above all, there is the Trans-Caspian project. But for now, Russia is still exerting an intimidating influence on Turkmenistan.

As for Chinese influence over Ashgabat, it will not be easy to overcome. A lot depends on Türkiye being able to outplay China and Russia put together. It seems to me that Ankara is not ready for that. The Trans-Caspian story is quite illustrative in the sense that the idea of 'all Turkic gas to Europe via Türkiye' can be easily defeated through the Kremlin's 'tip' in Ankara's high offices, having previously proposed projects of Blue Stream, South Stream, Turkish Stream and now some kind of 'gas hub on the Türkiye-EU border'. That is why the issue of Trans-Caspian and Turkmen gas in Europe remains only in words", Honchar summed up.