MAY 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a boost for its ambitions to become the region’s top gas exporter, Turkmenistan said that it had discovered a potentially large gas field near the Caspian Sea.
New gas field finds, especially of the size touted by Turkmenistan, are rare and the announcement created excitement in the oil and gas sector.
“According to the preliminary estimates, the well’s productivity is 500,000 cubic meters of natural gas and 150 tonnes of gas condensate per day, which confirms the huge hydrocarbon potential of the coastal zone and the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea,” the state-owned news agency Turkmenistan Today said of the discovery at the Uzunada area.
“Increasing hydrocarbon production is one of the priorities of the domestic fuel and energy complex.”
Turkmenistan’s economy is heavily skewed towards gas exports, mainly from the Galkynysh field, the second largest in the world, in the east of the country. A pipeline from the field feeds gas directly to China and a new pipeline is being built that will pump gas to Pakistan and India.
Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked of diversifying the Turkmen economy towards fertilizer and electricity production, but gas still dominates. The fall in gas prices has hit it hard and even forced a rare admission of economic weakness, with a cut to the manat currency in 2015.
If the new field was commercially exploited and did manage to produce at the rate of 500,000 cubic metres of gas per day claimed by Turkmenistan, it would add significant capacity to the country’s overall production. The Galkynysh field produces gas at around 1.7m – 2m cubic metres per day.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
