21-08-00 Representatives of Shell announced that Turkmenistani President Saparmurad Niyazov had decided to go ahead with plans to construct a gas pipeline across the Caspian Sea and through the southern Caucasus to Turkey.
It appears that Niyazov has approved Shell's plan for construction of the gas conduit and will appoint the company to carry out the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) project, they said. Western press sources said that Turkmenistani and Turkish officials had confirmed Shell's report.
Niyazov had been considering a work plan that called for expenditures of $ 2 bn on a pipeline that will follow an approximately 2,000 km route. Turkmenistani officials stressed, however, that the terms of the TCGP project had not yet been determined.

The Shell representatives, meanwhile, said that the company expected to be appointed as the leader of the project before the end of August. They also emphasised that Shell was eager to begin work and would ask BP-Amoco to join the project once it received its mandate. They also said that PSG International, the US-led group that had invited Shell to participate in the project as an equal partner in late 1998, would have to decide whether to it wished to participate.
The group pulled back from the project in June of this year, largely because of Niyazov's delays in making a decision on the plans for TCGP. Shell said at the time that it would proceed with the pipeline project; it drew up a new plan for consideration by the Turkmenistani government and began negotiations with Ashgabat shortly thereafter.