Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has inaugurated construction of a 7,000-kilometer gas pipeline to China to be completed by 2009, the official Turkmen newspaper said.
The gas will come from an area in eastern Turkmenistan that is estimated to hold 1.3 trln cubic meters of gas and where China's state-run CNPC has won extraction rights, the state-owned Neutral Turkmenistan daily also said.
Berdymukhamedov was quoted as saying at a ceremony in eastern Turkmenistan on Wednesday that the pipeline would run across Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China.
The pipeline will have an annual capacity of 30 bln cubic meters of gas and is to be completed by 2009, with 17 bln cubic meters of the annual gas volume coming from new fields in the Bagtyyarlyk region, he added.
Burren Energy, Petronas and Dragon Oil are the main foreign energy majors working on offshore gas projects in Turkmenistan. CNPC is the first foreign company to be granted development rights for onshore projects.
(AFX News, 30/08/2007)