Turkish-Japanese Group Offers $20bn for Turkmen Project
A consortium of Japanese and Turkish companies have proposed an investment of between $15bn and $20bn in gas processing facilities in Turkmenistan.
Turkish Renaissance Heavy Industries (RHI) as well as Japanese JGC and Chiyoda are negotiating with the Turkmen government over the price.
Both RHI and Chiyoda are already involved in big projects in Turkmenistan and the new one includes building facilities to remove impurities such as CO2, sulphur and water from natural gas, extracted from the Galkynysh field, one of the largest gas fields in the world.
Japanese Nikkei quoted the president of RHI Alptekin Tizer on February 29 as saying that the project's cost is expected to exceed the original value owing to the need for additional equipment.
Tizer expressed the hope of an agreement by summer.
JGC and other Japanese companies signed a memorandum of understanding to build these facilities when the country’s prime minister Shinzo Abe visited Turkmenistan last October.
Turkmenistan announced in January it is preparing to increase output from the world’s second biggest gas field, Galkynysh, in Mary province in the east of the country, to 95bn m3/yr by fully developing the three phases, without giving a date.
The country exported about 27bn m3 to China during 2015, while Russia decreased imports from 11bn m3 in 2014 to 4bn m3 in 2015 and stopped gas importing from Turkmenistan in early 2016.
According to a document, obtained by NGE, Turkmenistan’s third client, Iran, increased gas imports from this country by 35% to about 7.8bn m3 during the first ten months of the present fiscal year which began March 21.
Iran desk