Long-discussed shipments of Turkmen natural gas to Turkey could be just weeks away.
Several options have been discussed for bringing gas to Turkey, but news since February 10 indicates Turkmenistan and Turkey chose a swap agreement involving Iran.
Turkmenistan’s state information agency TDH reported the head of the country’s Halk Maslahaty (People’s Council) Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian by phone.
During that call, Berdimuhamedov “announced the agreement with (Turkey’s) BOTAS company on the transit of Turkmen natural gas through Iran to the Republic of Turkey…”
Since there is no pipeline connecting Turkmenistan to Turkey, the agreement involves a swap deal whereby Turkmenistan ships its gas to Iran and Iran makes a like amount of its gas available to Turkey.
However, on February 11, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar posted on X (formerly Twitter) confirming an agreement between BOTAS and Turkmengaz.
Bayraktar said “… gas flow is planned to start on March 1, 2025.”
There were no details about the volume of gas to be delivered, but Turkish officials have previously been mentioning an initial volume of some 2 billion cubic meters (bcm).
Turkish officials have been pushing for this deal for more than two years, with the ultimate aim of turning Turkey into a gas hub to shipments to Europe.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev traveled to Turkmenistan in December 2022 to meet with Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov (the son of Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov).
Erdogan and Aliyev were hoping for an agreement on construction of a pipeline to carry Turkmen gas to Azerbaijan and from there to Turkey.
Those talks were inconclusive, but did lead to a series of other meetings of officials of the three countries to discuss alternative means to ship Turkmen gas to Turkey.
The swap arrangement involving Iran was one of the possibilities raised during these meetings.
However, Turkey is still clinging to the plan for construction of a pipeline that would eventually boost Turkmen gas supplies to Turkey up to 15 bcm.
Turkish Ambassador to Ashgabat Ahmet Demirok said in September 2024 that his country was looking to purchase 300 bcm of Turkmen gas over the next 20 years.
The agreement is good news for Turkmenistan, but it also shows again how dependent Turkmenistan is becoming on Iran for gas exports.
When Turkmenistan became independent in late 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only gas pipelines in Turkmenistan led north to Russia.
Turkmenistan was exporting gas to Russia for most of the years after independence, but in 2024 the latest agreement between the two countries expired and both countries indicated they would not renew Turkmen gas exports.
The first post-Soviet pipeline built in Turkmenistan connected to Iran. That pipeline started operations at the end of 1997.
Another pipeline from Turkmenistan to Iran was launched in 2010.
The two pipelines have a combined capacity to carry some 20 bcm, but a pricing dispute between Turkmenistan and Iran in late 2016 led Turkmenistan to halt gas shipments to Iran at the start of 2017 and they have still not resumed.
The only other gas pipelines from Turkmenistan lead to China, which is currently Turkmenistan’s only gas customer, purchasing somewhere around 35 bcm annually.
The last of those three Central Asia-China pipelines was completed more than 10 years ago. No other pipelines from Turkmenistan have been built since then.
With no other export possibilities for its gas, the Turkmen has been forced to turn to Iran for swap deals with third countries.
For several years now, Turkmenistan has an on-again-off-again arrangement to supply Azerbaijan with 1-2 bcm of gas via a swap agreement with Iran.
In late 2024, Turkmenistan reached a deal to supply Iraq with 10 bcm, again using a swap arrangement with Iran, though it is unclear when those shipments will start.
There is still a question about the condition of the pipelines from Turkmenistan to Iran that have been largely dormant for eight years.
Iranian companies will perform maintenance on the two pipelines and build a new 125-kilometer pipeline to allow boosting Turkmen gas shipments to 40 bcm.
There is no timeframe for when this work will be completed.
Iran needs Turkmen gas. The northern part of Iran is not connected to the pipeline network leading to the gas fields in southern Iran and the Persian Gulf.
The swap deals effectively resolves the problem of Turkmen gas imports for northern Iran.
Turkmenistan could stand to gain from the swap arrangements with Turkey and Iraq as the country’s economy is stagnant and gas exports account for some 80 percent or more of revenues.
But these deals rely on aging pipelines in both Iran and Turkmenistan and on those two countries maintaining friendly ties, which has not always been the case in the last 10 years.
There is also the fragility of the Iranian regime that spent huge amounts of money supporting proxies in the Middle East such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Bashir Assad regime that fell in Syria in November.
Depending on the Iranian regime to be willing and able to carry out Turkmenistan’s swap agreement with third countries is risky.
