Volume 3, issue #2 - 22-01-1998

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Turkmenistan offers Shell leadership on gas pipeline-project

Dec. 3, 1997 Turkmenistan has offered Shell leadership of an international consortium to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Turkey via Iran, a Turkmen official said recently. "Meeting Alan Parsley, who is in charge of Shell EP International Ventures B.V., President Saparmurat Niyazov offered Shell to lead this consortium," the official from the state's oil and gas ministry told.
He said the preliminary cost of the pipeline, which will be around 1,500 km long, was estimated at $ 1.6 billion.
In May the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Turkmenistan signed an agreement on building the pipeline.
The official said Shell reacted positively to the offer and that if it agreed to lead the consortium they could begin forming it next year.
French company Sofregaz is currently working on a feasibility study for the project.
In line with the May agreement, Turkmenistan has proven its ability to deliver annually 28-30 billion cubic metres of natural gas to Turkey across Iran for 30 years.
The project appears to be another attempt by Turkmenistan to find alternative routes for its gas exports. At this moment it depends entirely on Russian pipelines.
In October, Unocal took the lead in a multi-national consortium planning to build a $ 2 billion, 1,464-km gas pipeline to Pakistan across northern Afghanistan. Niyazov has said the pipeline would have a capacity of 20 bn cmpy and might be built in 2000.
Turkmenistan plans to open a 200-km gas pipeline to Iran in 1998, with a capacity of 4 bn cmpy of gas.