China secures massive deliveries of Turkmen gas for the future

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan: China will boost its future annual natural gas purchases from the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan by 20 billion cubic meters, state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan reported Wednesday. It will sign an agreement to this effect later this year.

The agreement will eventually result in Turkmenistan's annual gas sales to China reaching 60 billion cubic meters, equivalent to more than half China's entire natural gas consumption last year.

Delivery of Turkmen gas to China began in late 2009 through a newly completed pipeline, but that route is only expected to reach full annual capacity of 40 billion cubic meters by 2015. As of mid-February, Turkmenistan had supplied 5.8 billion cubic meters of gas through the pipeline, according to Chinese oil company CNPC.

Planned increase in deliveries will only take place through construction of new pipelines.

''Turkmenistan has enormous oil and gas reserves,'' oil minister Bayramgeldy Nedirov said at an oil and gas conference in Singapore today. ''There are 160 discovered fields and 50 under development.''

Turkmenistan holds the world's fourth-largest gas reserves. It opened a gas line to China in 2009 as exports to Russia halted because of an explosion on a Soviet-era pipeline in April of that year.