ASHGABAT (TCA) — Turkmenistan’s state natural-gas company Turkmengas on January 4 said that Russia’s Gazprom Export, the export arm of Russian gas giant Gazprom, had notified Turkmengas of a decision to terminate purchases of Turkmen natural gas in January 2016.
“The decision is due to the changed situation in the international gas market, as well as certain economic and financial issues facing Gazprom Export,” the Turkmen gas company said.
Turkmengas also said it is ready for negotiations with Gazprom Export on “a wide range of issues related to economic ties between the two companies”.
In July 2015, Gazprom filed a lawsuit against Turkmengas at an international arbitration court in Stockholm. Officials from Gazprom said on July 24 that the lawsuit was filed over the price in a natural gas supply contract, but gave no details.
Earlier in July Turkmen authorities accused Gazprom of failing to pay for Turkmen natural gas supplies since the start of 2015. The amount of the debt was not indicated.
Gazprom purchased natural gas from Turkmenistan for its own use or resale.
The Russian edition of Forbes magazine reported on July 24 that the price Russia pays for Turkmen gas was about $240 per 1,000 cubic meters.
Turkmenistan supplies some 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China each year and plans to double that amount by 2020, while Gazprom plans to start gas exports to China in 2018, gradually increasing flows to 38 billion cubic meters per year from east Siberia.
In recent years, Gazprom purchased 10 billion-11 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas annually.
In October 2014, Gazprom announced its intention to completely refuse from natural gas imports from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and in February 2015 the Russian gas giant said it would sharply decrease gas imports — from ten billion cubic meters per year down to four billion cubic meters from Turkmenistan and from 3.8 billion cubic meters down to one billion cubic meters a year from Uzbekistan.
