American officials, striving to weaken the grip of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy monopoly, in energy-rich Central Asia, are forcefully wooing the president of Turkmenistan on his first visit to the United States.
The president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, in the first trip by a Turkmen leader to the United States since 1998, went to New York to attend activities Wednesday related to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. He met Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Nations.
U.S. officials say they want Berdymukhammedov to come away with the understanding that he has other options for developing extensive natural gas deposits and for shipping the fuel to market.
The United States wants to encourage the development of hydrocarbon sources outside the Middle East, while at the same time providing European countries with an alternative to the giant Gazprom, which provides nearly a quarter of the Continent's supply of natural gas.
Russia and, more recently, China have received the bulk of natural gas exports from Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic.
Russia buys 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year at below-market prices.
Russia also controls all export routes for Turkmen natural gas and it plans to expand its main northern pipeline in order to double its purchases.
China has signed a development agreement for one of Turkmenistan's most promising gas fields and has agreed to shipment of 30 billion cubic meters, or 1.7 trillion cubic feet, annually over 30 years.
"No one is trying to push Gazprom out of the Caspian - that's impossible," a U.S. official said. "What we want is for this totally dysfunctional system to change, where Gazprom can practically dictate the price for gas on the Turkmen end, and sells it for nearly three times that amount in Europe."
The official said he expected that Russia would still end up with the lion's share of Turkmen natural gas. Nevertheless, potentially rich fields in Turkmenistan's sector of the Caspian Sea could yield sufficient reserves to ship westward through an undersea pipeline to Turkey.
From there it could enter Europe's proposed Nabucco pipeline to Eastern Europe or another gas pipeline through Greece.
The size of Turkmenistan's natural gas reserves is a closely guarded secret. Analysts and Western government officials believe, however, that the country may possess at least three trillion cubic meters.
Some analysts are cautious. They say that at three trillion cubic meters, Turkmenistan would have just enough to fulfill its Russian and Chinese contracts. Moreover, the legal and economic obstacles facing the trans-Caspian pipeline make it a project for the medium term to the distant future.
"People are getting too far ahead of themselves," said Jonathan Stern, an analyst at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in England. "We need to see what Turkmenistan's reserves are and where they are. Then we can start talking about projects."
Berdymukhammedov - a former minister of health and the dentist of the country's previous ruler, Saparmurat Niyazov - was an unexpected choice to lead the impoverished country of five million people after Niyazov died last year.
Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan was one of the world's most insular countries. Since being elected president in February, Berdymukhammedov has begun to open Turkmenistan to the outside world and soften his despotic image.
His political actions have raised hopes that economic liberalization is not far behind, inspiring a pilgrimage among Western oil companies and officials to the capital, Ashkhabad.
ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP are among companies that have courted Turkmenistan recently, hoping to bolster their own reserves and tap non-OPEC sources.
Malcolm Wicks, the British energy minister, offered last week during an official visit to the region to buy Turkmen natural gas at market prices Berdymukhammedov said that Turkmenistan was willing to sell natural gas to Europe.
(International Herald Tribune)