Turkmenistan's new president has invited Chevron to work in the energy-rich Caspian Sea, government-controlled media reported Friday, as international competition intensifies over access to one of Central Asia's biggest energy producers.
President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov made the proposal Thursday at a meeting with visiting Chevron Corp. executives, the reports said. It may signal a change from the policy of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who allowed limited foreign access to the country's vast oil and gas deposits.
Just two major foreign companies now operate in the Turkmen sector of the Caspian shelf, Malaysia's national oil company, Petronas, and the United Arab Emirates' Dragon Oil. Petronas began commercial production at an offshore Caspian field last year.
Berdymukhamedov on Thursday told Chevron Vice President Guy Hollingsworth that Turkmenistan needs modern technology to develop its energy sector, the government-controlled newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan reported. He offered Chevron a chance to prospect for oil and develop oil fields in the Caspian shelf, it said.
The Turkmen president is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev on May 11.
During a Kremlin meeting with Berdymukhamedov last month, Putin said Moscow hoped to work on energy projects with Turkmenistan, the former Soviet Union's second-largest producer of natural gas, after Russia.
Turkmenistan's resources are playing an increasingly important role in the politics of the region. The Russian state-controlled gas giant, OAO Gazprom, controls the only transit route for Turkmen gas exports to other ex-Soviet republics and Europe.
The authoritarian Niyazov, who died in December, barred foreign companies from all oil and gas fields on dry land.
He granted foreign companies access to energy fields on the Caspian Sea floor, but only on condition that the output was shared equally between the state and its corporate partners.
The landlocked Caspian Sea is believed to contain the world's third-largest energy reserves. Turkmenistan shares rights to the sea floor with Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Russia -- although the Caspian states have tried and failed to reach an agreement on the boundaries of their respective sectors.
(AFX News, 04/05/2007)