Turkmenistan's gas exports are hampered by its gas neighbors

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to InfoTEK on the reasons for Turkmenistan and Russia's refusal to extend the bilateral gas contract and the prospects for increasing Turkmen gas exports in other directions.

"I don't think the reason for the termination of the contract is related to prices. Strictly speaking, it was not even broken: the contract expired on June 30, 2024, and the parties mutually decided not to renew it. Most likely, Gazprom did not initially envisage its prolongation," Alexey Belogoryev said.

According to him, Russia currently has no need for Turkmen gas: neither from the point of view of the overall gas balance (after a sharp drop in exports to Europe in 2022, it became deeply surplus for a long time), nor from the point of view of gas supplies logistics to Central Asian countries. In addition, since 2023 Gazprom has been experiencing increasing interest in the domestic markets of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, seeing them as new niches for the sale of gas from its own production, Belogoryev noted.

Turkmenistan's main opportunities to increase gas exports are connected not with Europe, but with China. Currently, there are three lines "A", "B" and "C" of the Central Asia–China gas pipeline system with a total design capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year. But about 30-33 billion cubic meters are reserved for Turkmen gas – this is how much its exports have been in recent years.